Running under the banner of Donald J. Trump’s populist political movement, #Bernie #Moreno,
the Republican challenging Senator Sherrod Brown,
humbly calls himself a “car guy from Cleveland” and recounts the modest circumstances of his childhood, when his immigrant family started over from scratch in the United States.
But there is much more that Mr. Moreno does not say about his background, his upbringing and his very powerful present-day ties in the country where he was born.
For Mr. Moreno, the way he has framed his biography — and the material that he has omitted from the frame — reflects a keen awareness of the political reality in the Trump-era Republican Party, in Ohio
In an Ohio hit hard by economic globalization and the decline of heavy manufacturing,
a candidate from the South American elite might feel like a stretch.
Instead, Mr. Moreno describes how he bet his life savings in 2005 on a small, underperforming Mercedes-Benz dealership on Cleveland’s West Side,
in an attempt to turn what could be a liability in courting the working class
— fabulous wealth, with assets valued up to $105.7 million and yearly income nearing $6 million
— into proof of his own hard work and entrepreneurial street smarts.