Crypto Industry Just Spent $63 Million to Stop Sherrod Brown — Ohio’s Senate Race Is a Proxy War
Sherrod Brown. Photo: U.S. Senate Photographic Services (public domain) / Wikimedia Commons
The crypto industry has never spent this much money to derail the political prospects of a single person — and Ohio is where it’s spending it.
Per CoinDesk’s November 1 analysis of federal filings, the industry’s leading super PAC, Fairshake, has committed nearly $56 million to keeping former Senator Sherrod Brown out of the U.S. Senate. Another $7.2 million from a PAC funded by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss brings the industry’s stake in Tuesday’s Ohio vote to roughly $63 million — and more than $100 million spent against Brown over the past two years. The spending is documented in a Reuters review of federal election filings published today.
Both are outside spenders: under FEC rules, independent expenditures cannot be coordinated with Senator Jon Husted’s campaign.
The industry’s case against Brown rests on what he did with the Banking Committee gavel, not on what he said. Brown declined to take up the crypto bills the House sent over while he chaired the committee, and they stalled. Since his defeat, the Senate has passed a major stablecoin bill and come close to finishing a market-structure bill. Husted, for his part, voted for cloture on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act (H.R. 3633) on September 15 — the motion failed 49-50, eleven votes short of the 60 required.
The spending has also sharpened Brown’s message. On the campaign trail he now attacks crypto and data-center money flowing into Ohio, telling one audience, “They know I’m going to take them on.”
Not all of crypto backs the strategy. Dennis Porter, chief executive of the Satoshi Action Fund, told CoinDesk that attacking Brown risks alienating the Democrats the industry may soon need at the negotiating table. Adrian Wall of the Digital Sovereignty Alliance said the money comes from a handful of heavily funded players, not the wider base of developers and users.
Where the race stands: the Suffolk University/USA TODAY Network poll released October 28 had Brown at 47% and Husted at 44% among likely voters — inside the poll’s 4.4-point margin of error. The Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up; Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates it Lean D. Traders on the prediction market Kalshi priced Brown’s return at 68%.
The stakes go beyond one seat. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats to the Democratic caucus’s 47, so Democrats need a net gain of four for a majority. Tuesday’s special election — called after Governor Mike DeWine appointed Husted in January 2025 to fill the seat JD Vance left when he became vice president — decides who serves the rest of Vance’s term.
We also reported today on Husted’s refusal to say what he pays to rent a D.C. house from a Meta lobbyist, two days before Election Day.
Sources: CoinDesk via Coindoo, Reuters review via Altcoin Log
