Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno speaks on stage on the second day of the Republican National Convention. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

At an Ohio Chamber of Commerce conference last week Trump allies struck a conciliatory tone at odds with the increasingly hostile rhetoric of the president-elect. Donald Trump has promised sweeping deportations, to mobilize police or even military force against a perceived “enemy within,” and to serve as a kind of avatar of “retribution” on behalf of his supporters.

But to hear Senator-elect Bernie Moreno and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy tell it, the incoming Trump administration will be an open hand rather than a closed fist. Their message? “Give him a chance,” instead of woe to the vanquished.

“I’m confident that he is eager to harness the learnings of that first term to go even further in this second term than anybody imagined even in uniting the nation,” Ramaswamy said of Trump.

In the very next breath he added the caveat, “Maybe not through words, through cheap verbiage — that doesn’t really unite people. But action does. Success is unified.”

Moreno offered a similar ‘tired of winning’ message, and committed to establishing a presence for his office in places that didn’t vote for him.

But even if both men struck a softer tone, that shift in tenor appears to be extent of the changes they expect. There was little to suggest they believe Trump will moderate on his stated policy priorities.

A mandate

After ousting three-term Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, and in light of Republican gains across the country, Moreno argued his party has “a mandate to lead.” But he was also circumspect.

“Look, I did not win the vote in Franklin County,” he said. “I did not win the vote in Cuyahoga County, Hamilton, Lucas, Summit, Athens or Montgomery — not that I’m keeping track.”

“But that means that’s my fault,” Moreno added. “I look at that as my failure. I failed to explain to the people in those counties why I would best represent them, and I will fix that over the next six years.”

He argued you won’t find a more pro-immigration Republican than him, “but I’m not pro-invasion.” Moreno said he wants to see a system that prioritizes people who add to the economy and don’t bring down wages, and suggested the country could even expand the number of visas and temporary work permits. But he said there should be “zero tolerance” for illegal immigrants.

Moreno said he’d work to “drive down the cost of everything.” The recipe, he argued, is to “massively cut” federal spending and to expand energy production.

“For those of you who care about the planet, like I do, us building coal mines here, and coal fired plants and natural gas is better for the planet because we do it safer, cleaner and much more efficiently than any other place on earth,” Moreno argued. He added that although there’s room for solar and wind, without subsidies they wouldn’t be viable sources.

The U.S. is already the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, and the fourth largest producer of coal — all of which benefit from federal subsidies.

Moreno argued we need a “renaissance of automobile manufacturing” in the United States, and that the way to do it is eliminating subsides for purchasing electric vehicles or mandates on EV production or fuel efficiency.

But while he expressed skepticism toward government intervention in energy production or automobile manufacturing, one place he doesn’t want to see federal officials step back is the Intel project in Licking County. Trump has criticized the CHIPS Act legislation that helped spur the project along, and Moreno acknowledged “maybe I don’t love the exact way the bill is structured.” He’d be more comfortable with tax incentives than grants, Moreno explained.

All the same, he argued, “the federal government made promises to Intel (that) they’ve not kept. The federal government said they’d give them billions of dollars in exchange for an investment. Not one cent of federal money has flowed into Intel.”

“We cannot lose that project,” Moreno said, adding “too many businesses in central Ohio are relying on that project to go forward.”

He emphasized the national security implications of bringing semiconductor production on shore and said he’d press the commerce secretary personally if necessary to get money flowing.

Rooting for them

Ramaswamy founded a biotech startup before gaining prominence in conservative circles as an author criticizing “woke” politics. He launched a longshot presidential campaign that saw his star rise even further, and he’s now seen as a possible Trump administration appointee or a future candidate for statewide office in Ohio.

He told the crowd he’s “rooting” for Democrats to step away from the cultural issues he’s railed against and argued the country would be stronger for it with both parties “pushing the other to be the best version of itself.” He argued for restoring a political discourse where “we can disagree like hell as Americans and still get together at the dinner table.”

“And if you give them a chance,” he said, “even if you’re on the left, I’m confident that that is the America that Donald Trump and our fellow Ohioan and good friend J.D. Vance, I think, are going to work hard to revive from the top and set an example for this country.”

But if Democrats don’t, he warned, they could be headed for “the dustbin of history.”

Ramaswamy readily defended one of Trump’s biggest policy promises.

“If we had the largest influx of illegals into this country in American history, it stands to reason that we ought to have the largest mass deportation in American history,” he insisted. “That’s not xenophobic, that’s not racist. That’s what it means to stand for the rule of law in the United States of America.”

He criticized independent federal agencies as a “fourth branch of government.” In truth, agencies generally are part of the executive branch of government, with top staff selected by the president. Their authority in a particular field like employment (National Labor Relations Board), trade (Federal Trade Commission) or communications (Federal Communications Commission) is delegated to them by an act of Congress.

But Ramaswamy argued a pair of recent Supreme Court rulings offer “a one-two punch” that could severely restrict their ability to act.

“It is a century-long sin in the United States of America,” he said, “that we now have a historic and generational opportunity to correct.”

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.