Crypto industry targets Sherrod Brown with $30 million ad campaign

Snollygoster | Ohio's Politics Podcast

The episode explores the massive $30 million political advertising campaign launched by the crypto-funded PAC Fairshake to oppose Senator Sherrod

Key takeaways

• The Fairshake PAC plans to spend at least $30 million to support Senator John Husted and oppose Sherrod Brown.
• Major contributors to Fairshake include Coinbase Global, Ripple Labs, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Main topics

• Crypto industry political spending
• Ohio Senate election dynamics

Notable quotes

Crypto has a grudge against Brown because... he backed tougher regulations on the crypto industry.

Conclusion

The episode highlights how specialized interest groups are increasingl

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This podcast was recorded Thursday, September 24th at 1030 a.m. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Yeah, like candidates for a Howe governor will offer other tax holidays to offset rising prices. How about a restaurant tax holiday or an automobile sales tax holiday or a sales tax holiday for the sales of holiday sweaters? Some ideas to consider. Let's talk politics. Speaker 3 (0:34) Cryptocurrency firms and their affiliated political action committees spent a whopping $40 million opposing Sherrod Brown as he sought re-election. It might have made a difference. Donald Trump won Ohio by 11 points, but Bernie Marino beat Brown by just 3.5 points. So, a relatively close election by Ohio standards these days. Crypto has a grudge against Brown because when he was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and when he was a leading member of that committee, he backed tougher regulations on the crypto industry. And Sherrod Brown is back looking to reenter the Senate and the crypto industry is back trying to stop him. This week, the leading crypto political action committee, Fairshake, said it plans to spend at least $30 million to support Senator John Husted. and oppose Sherrod Brown. Just another example of how important this race is in the struggle to control Congress, and another example of how big money is playing a huge role in how we elect our leaders. Joining us to dig deeper into this is Joe Light. He's a senior writer at Barron's who covers the intersection of Washington and business. Joe, welcome to Snowy Goster. Hi, thanks for having me. That's a big intersection, Washington and business there. Yeah, it's a lot to cover. Yeah. Anyway, $30 million coming from a PAC called Fairshake. What is Fairshake? Who Speaker 2 (2:07) funds it? Fairshake's a super PAC funded by the crypto industry. Its biggest donors are Coinbase Global, which is the largest US crypto exchange, Ripple Labs, which is one of the biggest crypto token issuers, and Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm that is one of the biggest investors in all of these crypto companies. They've been around for a few years now. quickly became one of the largest industry political action committees in the country. So whenever you hear that Fairshake is getting involved in an election, it can strike fear in the hearts of some of the crypto industry's opponents. So it's a big spender, and it's just now jumping into the 2026 general election. Speaker 3 (2:58) By its name, I assume they think that... the crypto industry is not getting a fair shake by a lot of its critics. Speaker 2 (3:05) No, I mean, sometimes these, you know, sometimes these packs can carry funny names or ones that don't jive with exactly what they're doing. But yeah, in general, the pack was founded because the Biden administration was taking an enforcement first approach to the crypto industry. The Securities and Exchange Commission was bringing enforcement actions against Coinbase, against Ripple, against pretty much any... crypto firm that was doing business in the US. In response to that, the industry decided it needed a more friendly Congress to step in and potentially pass a law that would take much of the crypto industry outside of the SEC's remit and shield it from both those ongoing enforcement actions and potentially against ones to come. So far, they've been very successful. They spent They spent lots of money and have changed the makeup of Congress in part by ousting former Senator Brown in their favor. Now, Speaker 3 (4:08) $30 million is a lot of money to me, probably a lot of money to you. Is $30 million a lot of money to this industry? Speaker 2 (4:15) No. And that's one of the things that I, you know, when I talk to crypto executives. that they kind of found most surprising, you know, when the industry finally got involved in politics a few years ago, you know, they found that money that was relatively inconsequential to them, especially relative to, you know, the size of businesses, you know, that they have, you know, they're trying to grow like, you know, a multi-billion dollar, you know, hundreds of billion dollar industry, you have a crypto market that has surpassed $1 trillion. And, you know, they could put a relatively small amount of that to work in Washington. And by Washington standards, $30 million is a huge amount of money. And the amount of money that Fairshake has is a huge amount of money. Speaker 3 (5:02) The numbers are, they're almost incomprehensible, the numbers that get thrown around. According to reporting, it's spending $120 million total on campaigns this cycle. That means it's spending one quarter of that total just on one race, Sherrod Brown's race here in Ohio. Speaker 2 (5:20) Yeah, and that's probably a reflection of two things. I mean, $30 million is an incredible amount of money if you were to pick your average Senate race. In