Former Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson liked to say that the true measure of a leader comes when they face a crisis, and he would know, having handled more than a few. Leading was easy when times were good, he’d say. A crisis tests a leader’s steel and ability to make sound decisions under stress. Former car dealer Bernie Moreno wants to be your leader in Ohio. The Republican is asking for your vote in his battle to supplant Democrat Sherrod Brown in the U.S. Senate. With Moreno’s effort and Jackson’s adage in mind, I offer the following for your consideration. I went on vacation at Walt Disney World last month with my wife, our children and grandchildren. We had planned it for a year, and one of my goals was to completely break free of my job for a week to immerse myself in the joy of being together. I disconnected my work email from my phone and turned off my notifications. I left texting intact, though, for family communication on days we went our separate ways. The first day of the vacation was July 13, which also was the day someone tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump. That’s a national crisis if ever there was one. No one wants our country to be a place where elected officials – former or current – are assassinated. Such attempts undermine our sense of national security and, with many, cause us to re-examine our national discord. Many politicians responded with messages of unity. Even though I was disconnected, I knew about the assassination attempt soon after it happened. I am a news guy after all. But I was in the Magic Kingdom with grandkids. My focus was their joy and wonder. Some time later, I checked my phone and saw a message had arrived at 8:18 p.m., exactly two hours and seven minutes after the assassination attempt. It was from Moreno. When “journalists” like you labeled Trump another Hitler and claim there will never be another election or that America ends if he’s re-elected, what did you think was going to happen? Again, this is barely a couple of hours after the attempt. No one had a clue yet about the would-be assassin’s motive or, or even, his identity. The nation was in shock that such violence had occurred once again and wanted details about Trump’s condition. But Moreno picked that moment to send the above text. Before I go further, I should mention a previous exchange I had with him. A couple of years earlier, on our Today in Ohio podcast, I was talking about Moreno as a candidate for Senate in the race that ultimately sent JD Vance to Washington. This was in the early days of the campaign, before Moreno had abandoned many of the principles for which Northeast Ohio knew him, before we realized how desperate he was for Trump’s approval. I marveled on the podcast that Moreno, who once urged Republicans to accept the 2020 election results, completely reversed himself and called the 2020 election stolen. I likened his reversal to the behavior of 1930s Nazis, who knew the truth about Hitler but kept standing by him for their political gain. Moreno found the comparison offensive, which might explain why he sent me a text mentioning Hitler. Regardless, here I was, vacationing in Walt Disney World with news of the assassination attempt fresh in my head, reading a text from Moreno saying it was my fault. I responded at 9:13: Yeah, Bernie. Stick with the fascist playbook. Try to blame the journalists. And I put my phone away. The next day, I saw that Moreno had followed up with a barrage of messages deep into Saturday night. At 9:21 p.m. came: You own this. Thanks to you I now have to take extra care to protect my family. I hope you get lots of money for your click bait crap. At 9:49: YOU OWN THIS!!! Apologize to your readers for your rhetoric. Anything short of that shows how shallow and hollow you are as a man. He sent two more messages that, for some reason, he unsent before I could read them. Too offensive? Too mild? Only he knows, but Apple’s messaging app recorded their arrival and deletion. At 10:08 p.m. he was still at it, texting me a social media link of someone criticizing the media for accusing Trump of inciting violence. He finished up at 12:39 p.m. the next day with a link to a column I wrote about Trump – one that was popular across the globe – and this message: Resign. You’re a disgrace to your profession. I never responded again. One, I was on vacation, and two, I have found the best response to unhinged messaging is to ignore it. I regularly receive unhinged messages, which seem to get sloppier the later they arrive in the night. Normally, I would have let Moreno’s messages fade into the background without thinking about them again, as I do with most offensive messages I receive. In this case, I keep returning to the fact Moreno seeks your vote. Part of my job is to inform the electorate about candidates. For three weeks, I’ve been nagged by a feeling that my duty here is to share his texts? I don’t publish this incautiously. I know some will say this column is petty, or partisan. It’s not about that. It’s about me being a journalist with exclusive access to information about a candidate for statewide office. I’d publish it no matter which party he represented. I can say that I’ve been at this work for many years, and I’ve never received anything remotely similar from Sherrod Brown. Or Mike DeWine. Or Rob Portman, John Glenn or George Voinovich. No, this is about Moreno the person, not Moreno the Republican. When he found himself facing the national crisis of an attempted assassination of a former president, his immediate response wasn’t to remain calm and wait for the facts. He didn’t become pensive or unifying. He jumped to a preposterous conclusion and went on the attack. Which brings me full circle, back to Frank Jackson’s adage about how leaders show their mettle in a crisis. Read Moreno’s messages again. Is this how a leader should respond to a crisis? I'm at cquinn@cleveland.com Thanks for reading | 