Fairshake, the crypto industry’s largest political action committee, will spend at least $30 million to keep former Ohio senator Sherrod Brown from returning to Washington, the group confirmed Monday. The campaign of ads and direct mail starts Tuesday, according to reporting from The New York Times and Politico, and lands one week after Senate Democrats blocked the industry’s top legislative priority, the CLARITY Act.
The commitment makes Ohio the most expensive crypto-focused Senate race of the 2026 cycle so far. Fairshake and its affiliated groups hold roughly $120.4 million in combined funding, and the group had considered conserving cash for 2028 before deciding to tilt heavily into this year’s midterms instead.
Why Brown again
Brown is a familiar target. As Senate Banking Committee chair, he repeatedly criticized the digital asset industry and said in 2024 that it had “betrayed the public interest.” Fairshake and its affiliates answered with about $40 million in advertising against him that year, spending that helped defeat the three-term senator in favor of Republican Bernie Moreno. FEC records show $40.1 million in outside spending against Brown in that cycle, the single largest line in Fairshake’s 2024 ledger.
Brown is now running for the seat held by appointed Republican Senator Jon Husted, and a win would likely return him to the Banking Committee, where crypto market structure legislation would have to clear. That procedural reality is the core of Fairshake’s math. The CLARITY Act, which passed the House 294-134 in July 2025 and cleared Senate Banking in May, failed a cloture vote on September 15 by a count of 49 to 50, well short of the 60 votes needed. Four Republicans, including Susan Collins, Josh Hawley, Jerry Moran and Thom Tillis, joined the opposition.
“He will keep an open mind and work to ensure that as more people use cryptocurrency, it expands opportunity and lifts up Ohioans,” Brown’s campaign manager said in a May statement.
Brown has softened his public rhetoric since 2024, and Politico notes he has tried to avoid inviting outright attack ads. Fairshake is spending anyway. The group describes itself as bipartisan, but its 2026 alignment has leaned Republican, and the Ohio buy signals that candidates who opposed the industry’s bill will pay a price regardless of party.
The CLARITY connection
The timing is not subtle. The cloture failure on September 15 froze the market structure bill for the foreseeable future, with Congress heading into recess ahead of the November midterms. Reuters reported that the vote “effectively freezes the Clarity Act for the foreseeable future,” and that the industry had spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying for its passage over the past two years.
With legislation stalled, the industry’s remaining lever is electoral. A Republican pickup in Ohio would strengthen the odds that a market structure bill reaches the floor in the next Congress, and would remove a former committee chair who has been the industry’s most prominent Senate critic. Fairshake’s previous Ohio spend followed the same logic, and the group’s leadership has argued that supporting candidates regardless of party is the whole point of the war chest.
The bill itself would divide digital asset oversight between the SEC and the CFTC, define digital commodities as assets that rely on a blockchain for their value, and set registration and customer protection requirements for digital asset businesses. Senate Democrats who blocked the cloture vote cited consumer protection, illicit finance, ethics and conflicts of interest provisions as unresolved. Seven Senate Democrats had rejected an updated draft in late July on those same grounds, and ethics safeguards covering elected officials’ crypto holdings remained the sharpest sticking point going into the September session.
2024 versus 2026
| Measure | 2024 cycle | 2026 cycle |
|---|---|---|
| Spending against Brown | $40.1 million | $30 million committed |
| Outcome | Brown lost to Bernie Moreno | Race against Jon Husted, November 2026 |
| CLARITY Act status | Passed House July 2025 | Cloture failed 49-50 on Sept 15 |
| Fairshake war chest | Roughly $200 million raised | About $120.4 million across affiliates |
The comparison understates the total 2026 picture. Fairshake spent across many races in 2024, backing winners in Arizona, Michigan, Indiana and West Virginia, with individual races routinely clearing $10 million in support. The Ohio commitment is the largest single announcement so far this cycle, and strategists told Politico the group is expected to lean Republican overall this year even as it maintains the bipartisan framing.
What the money buys
Thirty million dollars in a single state Senate race buys saturation. Ohio media markets, concentrated in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, are affordable compared to coastal states, and direct mail operations can reach low-propensity voters cheaply. Brown starts at a structural disadvantage against Husted, a sitting senator and former lieutenant governor, though he brings three decades of statewide political history and unusually high name recognition to the race.
Crypto policy itself polls as a low-salience issue for most Ohio voters. The ads are more likely to frame Brown through broader economic arguments, with crypto positions as a supporting charge rather than the headline. That was the shape of the 2024 campaign, which tied Brown to inflation and economic frustration more than to digital asset policy. Fairshake’s research has consistently found that attacking candidates on crypto alone moves few votes, so the money tends to amplify existing economic narratives instead.
There is also a deterrent effect that never shows up in the spending reports. Candidates who watched $40 million land against Brown in 2024, and watched Moreno win, have adjusted their public positions. Brown himself softened his language this year, his campaign manager promising an open mind on the industry. The Ohio buy rewards that shift and punishes anyone who calculates differently.
The wider map
The Ohio buy lands in a midterm environment where control of the Senate will likely be decided in a handful of states. Crypto PAC money has become a structural feature of these contests since 2024, when Fairshake and allied groups became some of the largest outside spenders in federal elections. The industry’s calculus after the CLARITY failure is straightforward: agency rulemaking under the SEC and CFTC can be reversed by future administrations or rewritten by courts, but a statute cannot, and statutes require senators who will vote for one.
The Trump administration has continued regulatory easing through the agencies, including the CFTC’s moves on perpetual futures and the SEC’s work on tokenized products, but industry lobbyists concede those rules lack legal permanence. That gap between agency action and statute is exactly what the CLARITY Act was written to close, and it is why the industry treats Senate composition as its highest-leverage target.
Brown’s campaign has not yet responded to the announcement. Husted’s allies noted the incumbent already holds a financial edge in the race. The ads begin Tuesday, and the race will run for another seven weeks before Ohio voters decide it.