Crypto PAC money sweeps four primaries, then stalls in Miami

Crypto super PAC Fairshake backed winners in four of five congressional primaries on Tuesday. But a Democrat in the Miami area weathered more than $2 million in attack ads funded by Fairshake.

Fairshake sweeps four primaries and drops Florida’s 24th

Fairshake channels its spending through two affiliated PACs. Protect Progress backs Democrats. Defend American Jobs backs Republicans. The two committees spent about $3.6 million on primaries in Alaska, Florida and Wyoming.

Defend American Jobs spent about $1.5 million to support three Republicans. Two of them were winners. Sydney Gruters won Florida’s 16th district, and Representative Harriet Hageman won the Wyoming Senate race. The third, Nick Begich in Alaska’s at-large district, is expected to advance.

Protect Progress spent more than $150,000 on Democrat Lois Frankel, who won the primary in Florida’s 23rd district. The four will likely face challengers in the general election in November.

Florida’s 24th district was the one exception. Protect Progress spent over $2 million on negative ads and still lost. Oliver Gilbert took the Democratic primary with 34.4% of the vote, beating Shevrin Jones and Kendrick Meek.

On Aug. 12, Gilbert accused “[Donald] Trump’s tech billionaire buddies” of being behind “crypto con artists trying to buy a Democratic primary.”

The Protect Progress ads used fake Miami Herald headlines that misrepresented Gilbert’s positions. A PAC spokesperson responded that “the underlying facts in our ad are true.” Gilbert made no mention of crypto or the ad campaign in his Tuesday night victory speech.

A $193 million war chest points at the CLARITY Act

The network reported a $193 million war chest as of January, largely from Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz. In the 2024 cycle, it spent more than $130 million to help elect friends and to defeat critics. As of June, it had already spent more than $82 million in 2026 races.

Protect Progress spent ~$5.5 million in June to help Maryland state delegate Adrian Boafo win the Democratic nomination in that state’s 5th district, part of a total of about $11 million in outside spending on his behalf, according to Cryptopolitan‘s previous report citing FEC filings.

Federal records show Protect Progress reported $23.6 million in receipts for the 2025-2026 period, nearly all of it transferred in from affiliated committees, and $22.7 million in independent expenditures.

Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter said that the group is “just getting started building the largest pro-crypto Congress in history.”

Congress is not in session until September, when the Senate will consider a cloture motion on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a bill meant to set comprehensive rules for digital assets.

In July of 2025, the House passed CLARITY by a bipartisan vote of 294-134. Senate Democrats have pushed for stronger ethics language related to the Trump family’s crypto holdings.

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