Moreno, Ramaswamy and Shapiro talk future of conservatism with Miami Republicans, others
Immigration and the economy were among the two biggest points of discussion during a Future Leaders Forum with conservative figures at Miami University.
Conservative leaders including Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and political commentator Ben Shapiro spoke to roughly 500 Republicans at a Future Leaders Forum Oct. 10. The event was hosted at Miami University by the Ohio College Republicans Federation (OCRF).
Spencer Mandzak, a Miami University senior and chairman of OCRF, said roughly 175 of the attendees were members of College Republicans, including 80 from other colleges across the state. The private event was invite-only, Mandzak said, due to concerns about disruptions from protestors.
Shapiro was scheduled to participate in a discussion with Ramaswamy and Moreno during the event but was delayed by Hurricane Milton. He arrived during a reception after the event and had a chance to address the crowd.
Moreno, a Cleveland businessman and immigrant from Colombia, is locked in a close race with Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in a race that could determine the balance of the U.S. Senate. Moreno said the race is one of the most expensive in U.S. history and pitched himself as a fresh option for Ohio. Brown, the only Ohio Democrat currently in a position elected statewide, was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992 and to the U.S. Senate in 2006.
During the forum, Moreno said his original reason for getting involved in politics was what he saw as a government overreaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreno first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022 but withdrew before the Republican primary, which J.D. Vance went on to win.
“This country is going way too far to the left,” Moreno said. “This country is intended to be governed from the middle; you don’t want to have one extreme or another. You want to have individual liberty and freedom. You want people to be able to make their own decisions.”
If elected, Moreno said his first priorities would include hiring his own staff, voting for a strong majority leader in the Senate and securing the border.
Moreno also said lowering the cost of living is important to him and said that "the affordability of a normal life is at stake" in this year's election. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 12-month increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was at 2.4% in September, down from a high of 9.1% in June 2022. The CPI percent change dropped from 2.5% in January 2020 to 0.1% in May of that year due to the pandemic but began increasing after that. It has been on a downward trend since the summer of 2022.
Moreno’s website lists 16 priorities including to reduce anti-growth regulations, “allow free markets to work,” “end wokeness and cancel culture” and “supporting a ban on late term abortions.” Moreno recently received national media attention for criticizing women who are single-issue voters on abortion and said “it’s a little crazy.” He added that “especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’” Last year, Ohio voters passed an amendment to protect abortion access in the state constitution with 57% of the vote.
Border security was a particular focus of the forum for both Moreno and Ramaswamy. Moreno said that “stopping illegal immigration is actually very, very easy” and that undocumented immigrants have driven housing costs up for Americans. Former President Donald Trump has pitched mass deportations as a solution to housing affordability.
During the Republican presidential primary this year, Ramaswamy rose to prominence for his far-right views, including claims that the Jan. 6 insurrection was an “inside job.” At the forum Ramaswamy described the U.S. as having a “national identity crisis” and said the Republican party is at an inflection point. The party must decide between working within the existing administrative framework with numerous federal agencies — which Ramaswamy called the “nanny state” — or shutting down the “regulatory state” entirely, Ramaswamy said.
Ramaswamy received applause when he called for the federal government to shut down the Department of Education and again when he said the U.S. needs the “largest deportation in American history” to combat illegal immigration.
Gabe Guidarini, a student at the University of Dayton and president of College Republicans of America, said the organization has changed since Trump’s election in 2016. College Republicans of America formed in 2023 as an alternative to the College Republican National Committee.
“We wanted to do things a little bit differently,” Guidarini said. “We saw that the old way of doing things with College Republicans was starting to become more outdated. We wanted to lean more into the Trump element, because that’s what actually makes people enthusiastic now. That’s what young people look at.”
Mandzak said College Republican organizations in Ohio have rebounded since the pandemic. The OCRF included 30 chapters prior to 2020 and dropped down to nine during the pandemic, but Mandzak said the organization is back up to 19 across the state and plans to add more this fall.
Early voting has begun in Ohio, and Election Day is Nov. 5. Butler County voters can check their polling locations here.
