(From left) Sec. of State Frank LaRose, Bernie Moreno, and state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, on the debate stage. (Photo courtesy of WCMH-TV.)
One of the sharpest critiques leveled during Monday’s Republican U.S. Senate debate had to do with several employment cases against Bernie Moreno. Those cases, first reported by the Columbus Dispatch and the Associated Press , have to do with wage theft and workplace discrimination.
“This is about trust,” state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, needled, “And Bernie, we learned this week that I don’t know if we can trust you.”
Moreno lashed out at the judge in Massachusetts — “a Harvard elitist” — and defended his actions. “Read the documents,” he insisted, “the underlying data was not destroyed.”
Still, in that case, the jury sided with his workers, and the judge ordered Moreno to pay more than $400,000 to two former employees.
The Westlake businessman took over a Mercedes Benz dealership outside Cleveland in 2005. Over the next decade he grew that business to include several other car dealerships in Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, and Massachusetts. More recently, Moreno branched out into blockchain technology as well.