Crypto's powerhouse super PAC, Fairshake, found its kryptonite

The crypto industry's top political funding arm, the Fairshake political action committee, put an unprecedented $56 million into defeating Democrat Sherrod Brown, who won Tuesday night by a margin of nearly 5%.

Among industry-fueled super PACs, Fairshake and its affiliates have been outsized players in congressional elections, exploding onto the scene in 2024 and setting a tone as a single-cause, pragmatic operation seeking to spend whatever it takes to get crypto yes votes into Congress. It said it spent about $154 million on campaign ads this year to draw more allies onto Capitol Hill, but it blew a third of its money on trying to stifle Brown, despite ample signs that Democrats were going to have a big night.

Before that, it went after Juliana Stratton with $10 million during her Democratic primary, but she overcame that opposition to win her party's Illinois nomination (and then the general election this week). Former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Brown and Stratton will arrive in the Senate under a strong Democratic majority in January, and both will have reason to turn a critical eye to crypto.

"This was a resounding defeat of the crypto industry's overall political strategy and, I think, was a broader critique of the tech industry's political and social playbook by voters across the board," said Mark Hays, who works on crypto issues at Americans for Financial Reform, in a CoinDesk interview. He said the spending against Brown recalled the scene in the Batman film, "The Dark Knight," in which the Joker sets fire to a massive pile of money.

"The industry definitely has some soul searching to do when it comes to how they approach politics," Hays said.

Though Ron Hammond, Wintermute's head of policy and advocacy, offered a counterpoint:

"Sherrod Brown has a track record of going against a stablecoin bill or going up against a vote when he was banking chair," Hammond said. "I think the folks at Fairshake were fully justified in going after him."

Democrats watched the industry — Fairshake and other crypto PACs — make a final election rush into Republican support in recent weeks. That move largely backfired, apart from a successful $11 million Fairshake bet that Republican Pete Ricketts would secure his seat in Nebraska.

"As the biggest spender in the Nebraska Senate race, we're proud to have helped Sen. Ricketts weather the waves of a hard-fought cycle," Fairshake spokesman Geoff Vetter said in a statement on Wednesday. "Fairshake played a meaningful role in winning competitive races across the country in 2026, and we will do it again in 2028."

Apart from its big swing against Brown in Ohio, Fairshake stuck in the general election to a list of 32 House of Representatives incumbents that most considered safe, but the Democratic surge took out two Republican crypto advocates who'd occupied prominent roles in industry-friendly legislation: Bryan Steil and Bill Huizenga.

Among the rest, two North Carolina Republicans are hanging onto their seats with very narrow margins, and the elections even threatened House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, the leader of the most recent crypto pushes in Congress, with a tight race.

Echoing its previous strategy two years earlier, Fairshake expended much of its money and energy on primaries — especially those in which its largesse could lift a single candidate to the top of a highly competitive field.

A person close to Fairshake flagged the importance of its primary wins for Barry Moore (the Alabama Republican on whom the super PAC spent $12 million), Christian Menefee (a Texas Democrat the industry backed in an effort to eliminate crypto-critical incumbent Al Green), Adrian Boafo (a Maryland Democrat who received $5.5 million in Fairshake support), Andy Barr (a Republican U.S. representative who got $7 million for his Kentucky Senate race) and Jasmine Clark (a Georgia Democrat who received $4.2 million.) All of them easily won their general elections.

It's difficult to dispute that dozens of members of Congress have been aided in their campaigns by crypto funds — both in this cycle and in 2024. Setbacks aside, a growing number of pro-crypto lawmakers are amassing in the Senate and House. But will it overcome the critical backlash from the next chairpeople of the congressional committees that crypto will need to pass bills through?

A number of vigorous crypto critics, such as Maxine Waters in the House and Elizabeth Warren in the Senate, could defend a wall of resistance to big-ticket efforts like this year's Digital Asset Market Clarity Act. But there remains some industry hope that narrower efforts might still be tackled, such as crypto taxation.

In 2024, Fairshake established a kind of high-spending, goal-oriented strategy for an industry PAC, and it caught notice from other sectors. The amount that a donor-dependent political campaign can afford to spend on advertising is typically blown out of the water by the unlimited spending from corporate super PACs taking full advantage of the 2010 Citizens United ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court. But Fairshake's aura of apolitical invulnerability took a high-profile hit this week with its costly Sherrod Brown miss.

CoinDesk asked spokespeople for Coinbase, a16z and Ripple Labs whether they'd reconsider their strategy as the primary backers of Fairshake, though none of them immediately offered comments.

Ripple's chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, posted on social media site X: "Let me be clear — some headlines will call this a setback for crypto. The facts are far more nuanced. Fairshake secured meaningful wins in both the primaries and the general election." He said Ripple is still committed to "continued investment in political engagement through super PACs."

Fairshake issued a forward-looking message for the next elections: "Newly elected and current members will have a choice: Protect consumers and American jobs or fight progress. We will be watching, and '28 is a new map."

The super PAC has recently said it has $56 million remaining on-hand for the next round of congressional contests. That already puts it ahead of most industry funds even before the political world takes a breath and shifts toward 2028.