Last week’s US Senate failure to advance a digital asset market structure bill could light a fire under cryptocurrency industry groups seeking to sway key congressional races in the 2026 US midterm election that‘s just 42 days away.
Senators on Sept. 15 voted 49 in favor and 50 against advancing the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, significantly reducing the chances of Congress passing the legislation with limited days in session before 2027.
While some crypto advocates haven’t ruled out the possibility of CLARITY coming up for another vote before the next session of Congress, at least one of the industry’s political action committees (PACs) isn’t taking any chances.
One PAC backed by Coinbase and Ripple Labs, Fairshake, now plans to pour $30 million into opposing Sherrod Brown in Ohio’s Senate race. Brown chaired the Senate Banking Committee when Democrats were in the majority and espoused many policies against crypto, making his potential return a challenge to another vote.
“[If Brown] wins, he might well be the deciding vote or one of the two deciding votes in a Democratic majority in the Senate,“ wrote economist Paul Krugman in a Tuesday Substack post. “And we now know that the Democratic Party is not clean as the driven snow. It is not immune to financial influence. It’s not even immune to de facto bribery from crypto.“
Steve Gannon, a partner at law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, told Cointelegraph that the CLARITY vote “provided the industry with a very clear picture of who are long-term reliable supporters and who are not,“ adding:
“It will be difficult for those who voted against Clarity to make the case that the industry should support them financially in the midterms.“
Related: CLARITY Act could get another shot during lame-duck session, policy advocate says
The former Ohio senator lost his 2024 reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno after Fairshake spent about $41 million opposing the Democrat. The PAC also spent more than $130 million on ads in the 2024 election cycle, offering a preview for how it might respond when faced with the threat of CLARITY not passing before the midterms.
Cointelegraph requested comments from Brown’s campaign but did not receive an immediate response.
How will the crypto industry react to CLARITY votes in the midterms?
Stand With Crypto, an initiative launched by Coinbase in 2023, warned that lawmakers who failed to advance the CLARITY Act in Congress last week could face “consequences” in the 2026 midterms based on their votes.
The organization responsible for rating politicians based on their positions on crypto could have a significant impact on the elections and on how PACs aligned with the industry use funds to target certain candidates, potentially influencing voters in an election year that could shake up control of the Senate and House of Representatives and give the market structure bill another chance of passing.
“The results of [the CLARITY Act] vote make it clear which officials are with our community, and which are against us — and we’ll make sure our advocates are ready to cast their ballots accordingly in this and future elections,” said Stand With Crypto executive director Mason Lynaugh.
As of Monday, Fairshake and its affiliate PACs Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress had not disclosed any expenditures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) following the CLARITY vote.
FEC filings also showed no post-CLARITY spending by Fellowship, another crypto-aligned PAC funded by Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage Digital, or the Digital Freedom Fund, a group backed by Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.
