Crypto Cash Threatens Sherrod Brown’s Comeback Campaign

A cloud of crypto campaign cash is looming over Sherrod Brown’s Senate comeback bid in Ohio.

A deep-pocketed super PAC funded by cryptocurrency companies that spent more than $40 million to successfully defeat Brown during his 2024 reelection campaign could again pose a major problem for the Ohio Democrat as he seeks to return to the Senate in next year’s midterms.

Defeating Brown, a longtime crypto critic who was a major roadblock for industry-friendly legislation as chair of the Senate Banking Committee, was the biggest win for the crypto PAC network, known as Fairshake. Its 2024 crusade featured more than $130 million in spending across a swath of House and Senate races, which helped turn around the industry’s fortunes in Washington.

The group has replenished its war chest with more than $140 million ahead of 2026, and it is already signaling that Brown could again be a target.

“Last year, voters sent a clear message that the Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren agenda was deeply out of touch with Ohio values,” Fairshake spokesperson Josh Vlasto said in a statement. “We will continue to support pro-crypto candidates and oppose anti crypto candidates, in Ohio and nationwide.”

The threat is the latest sign of how crypto — a financial product used by a small fraction of the U.S. electorate — has come to play an outsized role in American politics. Hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending have helped cultivate the friendliest regulatory environment in the industry’s history.

But the issue remains thorny for Democrats. While a growing bloc in the party has embraced the crypto sector, many Democratic lawmakers continue to warn that digital assets pose risks to the financial system and remain opposed to legislation currently moving through Congress that would help legitimize them.

As Senate Banking chair from 2021 to 2025, Brown often warned that digital assets open the door to illicit finance and money laundering, and he stood in the way of GOP-led proposals aimed at boosting the industry.

Crypto firms capitalized on Brown’s political vulnerability in 2024, when he was one of only two Democratic incumbents running in states won by President Donald Trump.

Fairshake — which is funded primarily by the crypto firms Coinbase and Ripple and the venture capital group Andreessen Horowitz — spent more money on his Ohio race than any other contest it targeted. The PAC plastered ads across the state boosting Republican Bernie Moreno, a crypto enthusiast and car dealer who successfully defeated Brown and now sits on the Banking panel himself.

It is unclear if Brown would return as the Banking Committee’s Democratic leader if he won, replacing Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Senate Democrats’ rules state that “the seniority of a Member with interrupted service or service in another Party does not date from that Member’s initial entrance into the Senate” — meaning he would not be entitled to count his prior service. But Democratic leaders could seek to change those rules or grant an exception to Brown, their top recruit for the Ohio race.

Regardless, crypto lobbyists worry that Brown could pose problems for them if he returns — especially given the brute-force tactics the industry used to try to take him out. And his opponent, Republican incumbent Jon Husted, has been a reliably industry-friendly vote.

Husted, who was tapped to fill the vacancy created when JD Vance became vice president, hasn’t been vocal about crypto issues during his short time in the Senate, but he has voted in favor of industry-backed bills on the floor and supported its goals when he served as Ohio’s lieutenant governor.

Husted campaign spokesperson Tyson Shepard said in a statement that if Brown enters the race, “he will be starting in the biggest hole of his political career,” dubbing him Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s “handpicked candidate.”

“He has never faced a candidate like Jon Husted,” he said. “Brown’s slogans will ring hollow as his coalition walks away, tired of the radical policies he’s forced to support to appease his coastal bosses in California and New York.”

Despite losing by more than three percentage points to Moreno, Brown is seen as Democrats’ best chance to win back the Ohio seat in 2026. He outran former Vice President Kamala Harris by more than seven points in the state, even as the crypto money contributed to a barrage of outside money that helped Republicans outspend Democrats in the race.

Ohio Democrats hope a more favorable national environment will help propel Brown next year.

“Crypto can come in again and do whatever they’re going to do,” said Jerry Austin, a longtime Democratic strategist in the state. “I think they’ve shot their wad. And if they want to come back and do it again, I think a lot of things have happened between the last election and now, and that is what Trump’s been doing in Ohio and the rest of the country.”