Is Max Miller the weakest link?
Unlikeable nepo-baby faces tense moments at home, in court, and in Congress
What is it? I think it’s a shrimp, or more likely a crawfish, wearing Spanish-y clothes with many frills and a bustle, leaning over a balcony to plead with someone to “come back!” but he can’t hear her anymore, her front features bathed in the blue glow of the streetlamp as she unburdens her soul. Good guess?
No! This is Ohio’s Seventh Congressional District, colored as its precincts voted in 2024 for their congressman. Cuyahoga County, which contains Cleveland, where I am about to live, nestles in the space above and between OH-07’s boxy claws. It’s been Total Blue as long as the rest of urban America.
The blue within OH-7 comes from lefty suburbs like Solon and Oakwood on the east end, Brooklyn and Parma Heights in the middle, Olmsted Falls down in the west-side elbow, and Bay Village and Rocky River on the west. (The blue flakes at the bottom of the map are the College of Wooster, which is in Wooster, which is west of Canton.)
Guess who (says he) lives in blue Rocky River? OH-07’s current occupant, red Max Miller. This guy:
Yes, he does resemble Eddie Haskell, the obsequious neighbor kid on “Leave It To Beaver.” He’s 36, first elected in 2022 when this version of OH-07 was created. He’s one of two-count-em-two Jewish Republicans in Congress. He is a scion of great amassed wealth, the Forest City real estate fortune, but did have to (or perhaps get to) work at a Lululemon store right out of college. He grew up in Shaker Heights, over by us. He was a corporal in the Marine Reserve.
Max Miller’s first ride in the 2016 cycle was with then-Sen. Marco Rubio, but soon he leapt onto the golden escalator. Post-election, Max went to Treasury, then the White House, where he slotted in as a liaison between the unhinged people at Trump’s perma-campaign and those at the Oval.
The next step was supposed to be kneecapping Anthony Gonzalez, the former Ohio State footballer who was a rare bit of good news for the GOP in 2018. But Gonzalez quickly became one of those Republicans — the shifting group of GOP lights who were turned off by things Trump did, ending up with the group of 35 who concurred with House Democrats on Trump’s impeachment after Jan. 6.
That made the increasingly visible Max Miller, loyal butt-boy of Commander Apesh*t, look like the smart move in this contest. Having taken his own big step, in Cleveland, of moving from the east side to the west side, he was ready for a big scorched-earth game-of-inches primary, and then Gonzalez nope’d out of the race, and Miller’s had not much quality opposition since.
Except maybe at home! Emily Miller, nee Moreno, married Max Miller at the Trump golf club with the waffle station where Ivana is buried. She birthed a daughter named Ruth and got served with divorce papers on her second anniversary. Her father Bernie Moreno sells expensive cars, is very rich himself, and was just elected to the U.S. Senate, ousting three-term Dem incumbent Sherrod Brown.
In her response to Miller’s divorce fling, Emily Moreno mentioned in passing that Max may have a little drug habit. And in his filings Max said “he filed for divorce after Emily Moreno Miller abruptly moved into a house she secretly bought,” wrote The Plain Dealer’s Sabrina Eaton. Actually, her father bought it. Now people are paying attention.
Miller has subpoenaed Bernie Moreno, which seems to me like a plan that can go extremely wrong for young Max, but I am still learning all of Ohio’s lessons. I expect by end-of-week everyone’s mouths might be stuffed with tightly rolled $100s wrapped in chocolate-dusted non-disclosure agreements.
As long as nobody ends up hog-tied in the lake river, Max will, I’m sure, soon be showing out with the lady who is now his Instagram lover (h/t D.J. Byrnes at The Rooster), a bodybuilder and influencer with the incomparable name of Jaclyn Faith Alatrash, herself freshly freed of a husband. Mazel!