Fairshake, the crypto industry’s largest political spending network, said it will support 32 House incumbents in the November midterms, split between 19 Republicans and 13 Democrats, and put at least $6 million behind six of them in the first round. The announcement on Monday lands five weeks before an election that will decide who writes the next round of US digital asset rules.
Every candidate on the slate voted for the CLARITY Act, the market structure bill that passed the House in July 2025 and then stalled in the Senate. On September 15 the bill failed a key cloture vote 49 to 50, leaving the question of how crypto markets should be regulated to the next Congress. Fairshake is spending to make sure the votes it already won are still sitting in the chamber when that debate reopens.
The initial six, at $1 million each, are Democrats Janelle Bynum, Derek Tran and Steven Horsford and Republicans French Hill, Bill Huizenga and Bryan Steil. Spokesperson Geoff Vetter described the group as issue-focused. “We back pro-crypto candidates who support American innovation in both parties,” Vetter said.
The $6 million is an opening move, not the plan. Fairshake and its two affiliated super PACs entered September with roughly $120.4 million in cash. The network is expected to spend more than $100 million on ads supporting House and Senate candidates across the 2026 cycle, with at least $30 million earmarked for Ohio’s Senate race, where Republican Jon Husted is running against Democrat Sherrod Brown. Brown chaired the Senate Banking Committee and led much of the committee’s crypto skepticism before Republicans took the chamber.
A bill that died, and the votes that survived
The CLARITY Act is the reason this list exists. The bill would have divided oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC, giving the commodities regulator the leading role for most tokens. It cleared the House with bipartisan support, then ran into a Senate that could not muster 50 votes to even begin debate.
Since the failure, the industry has moved to plan B. The CFTC opened a comment period this week on its own draft rules for crypto markets, covering retail intermediaries, customer asset segregation and reserves. FinCEN withdrew its proposed self-hosted wallet and mixing rules on Monday. Both moves run on existing agency authority and neither depends on the election. Fairshake’s answer is electoral instead: protect the incumbents who voted the right way, and raise the price for the ones who did not.
The House slate is a defensive play. Incumbents who took a recorded vote for the industry now get a funded return ticket. Six of the 32 get direct ad money in round one, which suggests the rest are on a reserve list in case their races tighten. The network spent in both directions in past cycles, backing allies and running ads against opponents, so a marginal incumbent has reason to read the list carefully.
Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group that tracks the PAC, reported in June that Fairshake had already spent $82 million on ads this cycle, both for and against candidates. The group has criticized the network’s reach into both parties, noting that crypto money has become one of the few spending sources that reliably ignores party lines. Fairshake was built for the 2024 cycle with major backing from Coinbase, Ripple and the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, and it has carried that donor base into 2026.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Incumbents backed | 32 total: 19 Republicans, 13 Democrats |
| Initial spending | $6 million, $1 million each to six candidates |
| Cash on hand, September | About $120.4 million across the network |
| Cycle spending plan | Over $100 million, including $30 million in Ohio |
| Ads spent by June | $82 million, per Public Citizen |
| CLARITY Act status | Passed House July 2025, failed Senate cloture 49-50 on Sept 15 |
What the midterms decide
The Senate math after November determines whether CLARITY or a successor gets another shot. Fairshake’s Ohio allocation shows where the industry thinks the swing seats are. Ohio’s race features the Senate’s most prominent crypto critic in Brown, and a $30 million buy aimed at one seat says more than the 32-name endorsement list does.
The House list also functions as a scoreboard for the next Congress. Hill and Steil both sit on the Financial Services Committee, where market structure bills start in the House. Huizenga has carried pieces of the securities side of the debate. Keeping committee members who already know the file shortens the path if the Senate flips to a workable majority.
Separately, the advocacy group Stand With Crypto, aligned with Coinbase, rolled out its own first round of Senate endorsements after the CLARITY vote failed. The two tracks run in parallel: one group protects the House, the other tries to build a Senate that can pass something. Neither changes the fact that no market structure bill is moving before January.
For crypto firms, the near-term regulatory picture runs through agencies. The CFTC’s draft rules and FinCEN’s withdrawal both happened on appointees’ authority, and both survive an election. Agency rules can also be rewritten by the next administration, which is exactly the fragility a statute would remove. What the midterms decide is narrower: whether the 50-vote coalition that blocked CLARITY holds, and whether the House members who voted for it get to come back and try again. Fairshake has decided that question is worth at least $100 million.