[ad_1]
COLUMBUS, Ohio — New financial disclosures offer updated details on the personal fortunes that Matt Dolan and Bernie Moreno each could tap to fund their bids to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate next year.
Dolan, a Republican state senator from Chagrin Falls, owns assets worth at least $14.5 million and as much as $41 million, according to a cleveland.com/Plain Dealer analysis of a report Dolan and other U.S. Senate candidates filed Monday. Dolan also reported roughly $750,000 to $2.1 million in business and investment income, mostly in the form of dividends, in addition to his $123,500 state salary.
Moreno, who recently sold his chain of luxury car dealerships, meanwhile reported assets worth at least $25.5 million and as much as $105.7 million. Moreno also disclosed $10.6 million to $13.8 million in income, including $10 million he and his wife, Bridget, made selling Champ Titles, an electronic auto-titling business that Moreno recently said he sold to focus on his Senate run.
Dolan and Moreno’s personal financial situations are a sharp contrast with Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, the longtime incumbent Dolan and Moreno each hope to unseat in the November 2024 election. In his own disclosure, Brown reported assets worth between $483,000 and $1.15 million, much of which were due to state pension holdings owned by him and his wife, journalist Connie Schultz. Brown filed amended disclosures this week to include retirement accounts from Schultz.
A third Republican Senate candidate, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, has not yet filed a financial disclosure. He entered the race last month, later than the other candidates, so he doesn’t have to file a report until Nov. 14. LaRose’s state financial disclosures suggest relatively modest economic circumstances, but aren’t nearly as detailed as those filed by U.S. Senate candidates. The Republican Senate primary will be held in March.
The details on Dolan’s and Moreno’s personal wealth were contained in financial disclosure reports each were required to file Monday with the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Ethics. The reports show the degree to which each candidate, who are running in the Republican U.S. Senate primary election in March, could comfortably self-fund their candidacy. The filings require only that the candidates disclose their business income and personal asset values in inexact ranges, rather than exact amounts, because that’s how the candidates are required to report them.
It costs around $10 million to run a viable U.S. Senate campaign. Moreno loaned his campaign $3.8 million when he ran for Senate ahead of the March 2022 primary election, although he ended up dropping out of the race. So far, he has not loaned himself any money yet this time around.
Dolan, meanwhile, has loaned his current Senate campaign $4 million, after loaning his campaign $2.6 million in 2022, when he finished third in the Republican Senate primary.
Dolan’s riches mostly are in stocks and bonds, although he reported having $1 million to $5 million in cash, as well as an investment his wife, Jessica, made in two race horses that falls somewhere in the five to six-figure range. His largest individual investment holding was a stake in 422 Company, Ltd worth $500,000 to $1 million. He also disclosed owning a share of Madison Square Garden, a company owned by the extended Dolan family, worth $30,002 to $100,000.
Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, disclosed no ownership stake in the team, although he sits on the team’s board of directors and was paid a $20,751 team salary.
Like Dolan, Moreno also reported a wide range of stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Moreno also owns a significant amount of real estate, worth an amount ranging from $5.1 million to $24.7 million. Moreno’s property holdings include a tract of land in Costa Rica worth $1 million to $5 million, and ownership shares of homes in Avon, Columbus, New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as a stake in a home in the Florida Keys worth $2.15 million to $10.75 million.
Moreno’s report, meanwhile, lacks several memorable assets contained in his last financial disclosure in 2021, including a home in the Bahamas worth $5 million to $25 million and a boat worth $500,000 to $1 million. Moreno, who helped organize a 2018 conference in Cleveland that touted blockchain technology that’s the underpinning for cryptocurrency, no longer owns any Bitcoin, after he previously reported owning an amount worth $100,001 to $250,000.
Moreno also disclosed a stake worth more than $1 million and less than $5 million in Narya Capital, the Cincinnati investment fund founded by Republican U.S. Sen. JD Vance. Vance won last year’s Republican Senate primary in May 2022, went on to win the general election in November, and has endorsed Moreno in the Republican primary election next March.
The value of Moreno’s investment in Narya is up from the $50,001 to $100,000 that Moreno disclosed in 2021. But Conor McGuinness, a Moreno campaign spokesperson, says that Moreno hasn’t increased his financial commitment to the firm since March 2020, before either Moreno or Vance became political candidates.
A document viewed by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer shows that Moreno in March 2020, shortly after Vance founded the firm, invested $29,000 in Narya. The document shows Moreno made the investment as part of a larger commitment to eventually invest $500,000.
The higher value of Moreno’s Narya investment reflects Moreno putting in additional cash to meet the $500,000 commitment, as well as an increased valuation of Moreno’s overall $500,000 investment, according to Moreno’s campaign.
Vance’s disclosure, also filed on Monday, meanwhile reflects that he ceased being a partner at Narya in December 2022, the month after he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He no longer has a day-to-day role with the firm, although he still retains a passive ownership stake.
Vance disclosed assets worth roughly $4.25 to $10.7 million, a mix of cash, stocks, bonds and other investments. Highlights included a townhouse in Washington, D.C., that Vance bought that’s worth $500,000 to $1 million and investments in various companies Vance owns through Narya worth $596,000 to $1.365 million. Vance said he made $995,000 to $1.1 million in business income, $121,376 in royalties through HarperCollins, the publisher of his best-selling memoir, and a $110,146 salary from Narya.
Vance’s largest individual company investment is a stake worth $116,000 to $315,000 in AppHarvest, a Kentucky indoor-farming company that recently saw its stock value plummet after declaring bankruptcy. His other two largest holdings are a share in Rumble, a streaming platform founded as a right-leaning alternative to YouTube, worth $115,002 to $300,000 and $100,001 to $250,000 worth of Bitcoin.
Jake Zuckerman contributed reporting.
Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer
[ad_2]
Source link