U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer, has introduced legislation that would affect the car industry since taking office in January. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) AP

WASHINGTON — As he ran for U.S. Senate last year, Bernie Moreno, who made his fortune in luxury car dealerships, said he’d sold all the companies he’d run to avoid conflict of interest accusations.

Yet since taking office six months ago, Moreno — whose son is building a Mercedes dealership outside of Columbus — has focused much of his legislative attention on boosting the car industry.

Is there an ethical question inherent in Moreno’s past and present interests?

Moreno, of Westlake, was outraged by the question. An ethics expert said ultimately it’s up to voters to decide.

When the Senate was formulating its version of the tax and spending legislation President Donald Trump labeled a “big, beautiful bill,” Moreno announced that he was seeking inclusion of six auto-related provisions.

Among them was a bill he introduced called the United States Automobile Consumer Assistance and Relief Act (USA CAR Act), which would allow a tax write-off for auto loan interest on U.S.-made cars, but limits the deduction to new personal-use passenger vehicles.

The others called for:

An end to all electric vehicle tax subsidies by September 30, 2025, rather than by the end of 2025.

Increasing the annual fee on electric vehicles to $500 and hybrid vehicles to $250, rather than $250 and $100.

Levying a 50% tariff on tire imports, excluding those included under USMCA, to support American-made tires and prevent dangerous tire imports from China.

Removing all Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) fines.

Lowering the federal excise tax (FET) on trucks from 12% to 2%.

In February, Moreno introduced legislation he calls The Transportation Freedom Act, which would repeal emissions rules and give tax breaks to car manufacturers. Its supporters include General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and American Trucking Associations.

There’s no indication Moreno has violated Senate ethics rules. Senate rules don’t prohibit former or current business owners from legislating in fields where they have business interests.

The rules say that Senate members, officers, and employees may not engage in any outside activity that creates a conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest with their Senate duties. They’re also barred from knowingly using their posts “to introduce or aid the progress or passage of legislation, a principal purpose of which is to further the official’s or immediate family member’s financial interest, or the financial interest of a limited class to which such individuals belong.”

But Moreno’s continued involvement in car-related legislation—paired with his ownership of Ohio land where his son’s new Mercedes dealership is under construction -—has fueled scrutiny over whether he’s truly distanced himself from the industry he once dominated.

Cynthia Brown, the senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-partisan, non-profit watchdog organization, said the rules permit U.S. senators and House of Representatives members to trade in individual stocks and to run businesses. They’re also allowed to do legislative work in fields where their businesses operate.

“The idea behind that is they’re voting on so many things, it’s so generalized,” Brown said.

Though it wouldn’t be a violation for a senator or congressman with ties to a car dealership to seek legislation that promotes the auto industry, she said it’s an issue that political opponents might raise in a campaign, and that voters might consider at the ballot box.

“That’s typically how the ethics paradigm has worked for members of Congress,” said Brown.

When asked whether Moreno’s involvement in car-related legislation could raise conflict of interest concerns given his background as a car dealer, Moreno press secretary Reagan McCarthy replied:

“There’s dumb and there’s Cleveland Plain Dealer dumb. The Plain Dealer’s ‘reporters’ have now resorted to printing deranged conspiracy theories instead of doing actual reporting and finding the facts. The truth is Ohio voters elected Senator Moreno precisely because of his business acumen and his long record of creating good-paying jobs—something the editors of the Failing Plain Dealer could never understand. Everyone can see right through these slanderous lies.”

Moreno likes to point out that while other car dealers have been elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, he’s the only one to ever serve in the Senate.

In a February interview with the Automotive State of the Union podcast at an auto show in Washington, Moreno pledged to put policies in place that would help auto dealers.

He said the National Auto Dealers Association has “a wide-open door to my office, we talk to them on a very regular basis,” and he’s also building relationships with “all the car companies.”

Automobiles represent “the spirit of freedom and adventure, and that will always be part of America’s DNA,” Moreno said. He cited the excitement teenagers feel when they get their driver licenses and can go wherever they want.

“We didn’t invent the automobile, but we invented what it became,” said Moreno. “And so, when I come to auto shows, it’s that feeling that I get, and I just love it.”

By Moreno’s reckoning, U.S. auto manufacturing has been under attack with inconsistent regulations, foreign competition, and misguided federal policies hurting auto workers, consumers and auto makers.

He says his Transportation Freedom Act would help fix some of those problems. Moreno says the bill would lower vehicle prices by “slashing onerous mandates that have made cars unaffordable to everyday Americans, like the EPA ‘tailpipe rule’ and California’s zero-emission vehicle mandate.” The bill would revoke the California rule to ensure that “all Americans— not just California politicians—have a say in our country’s transportation future.”

He says it would also end “arbitrary” Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that require manufacturers to build vehicles “consumers simply do not want,” and provides a six-month window for their replacement with tough but achievable standards.

It would also give car makers a 200% tax deduction for wages paid to U.S. auto workers, up to $150,000 per worker, and block companies from using the money they save for stock buybacks. Deductions would be limited to producers of vehicles with at least 75% U.S. content and those that did not transfer production outside the United States in the past taxable year. To get the deduction, car makers would also have to offer health insurance, profit-sharing plans and retiree benefits to workers and remain neutral in labor organizing campaigns.

In a video interview with the head of a company that facilitates auto dealership sales, Moreno said a group of car dealers helped him come up with the legislation, acting as his informal sounding board. He said passing it would keep car companies from having to subsidize electric vehicles by raising prices on cars that use internal combustion engines.

“This Transportation Freedom Act really frees the car business from the choke hold of government intervention,” Moreno told Alan Haig, president and founder of Haig Partners, urging Haig’s viewers to ask his Democratic counterparts to back the bill.

That interview was one of several instances where Moreno has emphasized close coordination with industry insiders —highlighting how deeply his policy goals reflect the interests of the sector he once worked in. The connection is particularly relevant given the Senate’s ethical standards governing lawmakers’ personal and professional entanglements.

Former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Columbus Democrat who Moreno defeated in November, repeatedly criticized Moreno’s business practices on the campaign trail, classifying him as an untrustworthy car dealer who “looks out for himself.” That argument didn’t convince Ohioans to reject Moreno, who won 50.1% of the vote against Brown.

While that line of attack didn’t stop Moreno from winning the race, it tapped into a broader debate: Should lawmakers with deep industry ties be viewed as conflicted—or simply as experienced?

It’s not unusual for Congress members to pursue committee assignments and legislation related to their business expertise.

For example, former U.S. Rep. Bob Gibbs, a Holmes County Republican, is a farmer who used to be president of the Ohio Farm Bureau. He served on the House Agriculture Committee and was an outspoken foe of Environmental Protection Agency regulations he said hurt farmers.

Former U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, a Wadsworth Republican, is an accountant who owned multiple businesses including nursing homes, sports franchises, as well as a car dealership whose 2010 closure he blamed on the federal government’s restructuring of General Motors during its bankruptcy.

In Congress, Renacci, while serving on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, asked the Treasury Department whether conservative GM dealers were targeted for closure during the bankruptcy, and urged the federal government to re-evaluate its standards for nursing homes.

Moreno used to own one of the country’s largest car dealership networks, mostly based in the Cleveland area. Saying dealerships were becoming obsolete, he wound down his business in the late 2010s and began investing in technology companies instead. Around the same time, he got interested in running for office.

After dropping out of the 2022 U.S. Senate race ahead of that year’s Republican primary election, Moreno began exploring how to re-enter the car business. He said he missed working with his clients, according to Automotive News, an industry publication. But he also described wanting to work with son, Kevin, whom he described as interested in the business.

But Moreno ended up running for office again. Becoming a full-time candidate, he sold his remaining operating business interests, including Champ Titles, a company that seeks contracts from state governments to digitize their auto titling. He also sold off his individual stocks. Moreno said the decision freed him up to focus on his effort to defeat Brown while avoiding ethical entanglements.

“I sold all my businesses.” Moreno told cleveland.com in March. “I didn’t want to have any conflicts of interest, so that no reporter could say, ‘Hey, Bernie’s voting this way because of this or that.’”

But Moreno’s complete break from the car business is harder to define.

A financial disclosure report Moreno released last year showed a business he controls spent $9.5 million to buy a 25-acre plot of land near an outlet mall in Delaware County off Interstate 71, about 10 miles north of Columbus. County records show the senator took out a mortgage through Mercedes-Benz around the same time. A Mercedes-Benz dealership whose partners include Kevin Moreno is currently under construction on the site.

When asked about the planned Mercedes dealership, a Moreno campaign spokesperson said Sen. Moreno had no direct involvement it, it wasn’t yet an operational business, and his ownership of the property was not at odds with how Moreno described walking away from his business interests.

Yet Moreno, his son, and U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, a Columbus-area Republican, were among those pictured holding shovels at the dealership’s February groundbreaking. The Delaware Gazette reported that the 46,000-square-foot dealership is expected to open next year in Sunbury.

The publication said Kevin Moreno, Dirk Schluter and Roger Penske, Jr., are partners in the dealership, which is currently operating in Mansfield, and will move to Delaware County when construction is done.

Moreno still posts regularly about the car industry on social media, including material promoting Champ Titles.

He also delivered a video address to the National Auto Dealers Association’s 2025 show in New Orleans. He kicked off those remarks by thanking the “thousands of car dealers from all over the country” who supported his campaign, telling the group, “The golden age of automobiles is right around the corner.”

In his speech, Moreno expressed antipathy for electric vehicle subsidies, his desire to stop individual states like California from setting auto emissions standards for the entire country, and said he’d asked Volkswagen and Honda to reconsider their recent efforts to bypass car dealers in selling particular models.

“Our priorities here in Washington DC are to make certain that we have a resurgence in automotive manufacturing here in America,” said Moreno. “We’re going to do that by giving great tax environments and regulatory environments to companies that are doing business right here in America.

A financial disclosure Moreno filed as a candidate showed that he and his wife own stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other shares of publicly traded and privately held businesses worth between $12.5 million and $52.6 million.

Moreno filed paperwork at the Senate’s financial disclosure office saying he’ll file this year’s disclosure no later than August 13. He recently filed a stock transaction report indicating he sold between $15,001 and $50,000 in Mobile Infrastructure Corp., which owns parking facilities. When asked about the transaction, a spokesman referenced an article in the Dayton Daily News that described it as letting go of a stock one of his limited liability companies acquired.

Moreno has co-sponsored legislation that would ban members of Congress from trading or holding individual stocks. In a press statement announcing his support, he said that corrupt career politicians “have spent decades in Washington rigging the system to make millions while their constituents struggle to make ends meet.”

“It’s time to ban stock trading in Congress and end the cycle of corruption,” Moreno’s statement said.