COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Early in his campaign, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno encouraged people attending his rallies to record anything he said. But after a controversial moment at one of his events, recent videos appear to show him pivoting with technology that blocks audio recordings.
Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman, is looking to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in one of the country’s most expensive races. Since January, he has told crowds at multiple campaign events that he welcomes attendees to do two things.
“As you know, if you’ve heard me speak before, I have two rules,” Moreno said at a February campaign event in Powell. “Rule number one is you can videotape and record anything I say. What I say to you here is what I’ll say to the media, is what I say privately, is what I say to my own team. … Rule number two is please ask difficult questions.”
But since the middle of October, Moreno’s campaign has been caught on camera twice using audio jamming technology to distort recordings of him being asked challenging questions. Videos provided by the Ohio Democratic Party show the device in action. The group confirmed to NBC4 that trackers — people who closely follow a politician to document things like their public appearances, speeches and other campaign activities — shot the recordings.
Watch: Audio jamming at Moreno event in Chesterland
A video from an Oct. 17 campaign event in Chesterland showed a tracker approach Moreno, asking whether he wanted to apologize for calling women who are single-issue voters on abortion “crazy” and joking that it isn’t a concern for any of them older than 50. The camera showed a person leaving the event with Moreno holding an object resembling a black box toward the tracker’s phone, muffling the sound so that it’s nearly inaudible.
Watch: Audio jamming at Moreno event in Portage County
Another video from an Oct. 23 campaign event in Portage County showed a similar incident. A tracker approached the Republican candidate and asked, “Hey Mr. Moreno, how many of your former employees do you think are gonna vote for you?”
The question references lawsuits from Moreno’s past as a businessman, including claims of wage theft, discrimination and failing to honor an agreement with a friend and business associate. Like the first video, a person put the jamming device between Moreno and the recorder, muffling the audio before his exit.
Chris Grant of Big Dog Strategies, a political consulting firm that’s worked with Moreno, boasted about the plan in an Oct. 25 post on X. He linked to an Amazon listing of the gadget, which is an “Ultrasonic Anti-Recording Device” from a brand called Spy Associates. The jammer sells for $399.99.
Moreno’s change of heart on letting rally attendees record his words came less than a month after a recording surfaced of his comments about women and abortion. Campaign spokesperson Reagan McCarthy suggested that Brown and the Ohio Democratic Party would have been wise to use the same technology but didn’t comment when asked if the device started being used in response to his controversial statement going public.
“Maybe if ODP staff carried these around, they wouldn’t have been caught calling Ohio voters racist for wanting to close the border,” McCarthy said.
The Moreno campaign representative claimed that the technology is only used against trackers working with Ohio Democrats.
“There are multiple Dem trackers at every single event we have,” McCarthy said.
Reeves Oyster, from Brown’s campaign, said, “Bernie Moreno can try to hide from Ohioans, but they know he only looks out for himself, insulted them behind closed doors, and would overturn the will of the voters by supporting a national abortion ban.”
