There is a number worth sitting with before reading the rest of this article.
Only 3% of Americans have heard of Fairshake. Only 9% have heard of Leading the Future. Between them, those two organizations have already deployed over $103 million to determine who represents you in Congress this November.
That gap between awareness and influence is not an accident. It is the strategy.
What $103 Million Actually Buys
Fairshake, backed by Coinbase, Andreessen Horowitz, and Ripple Labs, entered 2026 with $116 million in cash on hand and has already spent $28 million across competitive primaries. In 2024 a Fairshake-affiliated PAC spent over $40 million helping defeat Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, one of the most prominent crypto critics in the Senate. Brown is running again. Fairshake has not forgotten.
Leading the Future, the pro-AI super PAC launched in August 2025, has raised more than $75 million and deployed funds in primaries across North Carolina, Texas, Illinois, and New York. Its co-strategist previously advised Fairshake. The playbook is identical: identify candidates who will advance industry-friendly legislation, fund them before the general election, and make sure their opponents never make it to the ballot.
Together they represent something new. Not one industry buying access. Two industries with partly overlapping and partly conflicting interests jointly funding a congressional midterm at a scale that dwarfs anything seen before. The previous record for outside group spending in a midterm was $69 million, set by Club for Growth Action in 2022. Fairshake alone has nearly doubled that.
The Poll That Should Embarrass Everyone
Here is the detail that makes this story different from standard campaign finance coverage.
A Public First survey conducted for Politico in April 2026 found that 45% of Americans say investing in cryptocurrency is not worth the risk. 44% say AI is developing too fast. Nearly half trust a traditional bank over a crypto platform. Two-thirds want Congress to impose strict regulations or broad oversight on AI.
Americans trust traditional banks over crypto platforms- Source: Politico
The two industries spending the most money to shape Congress are the two industries Americans trust the least. The poll did not find mild skepticism. It found near-majority opposition to the core premise of both industries’ political projects, which is that they deserve less regulation and more freedom to operate.
The industry response to this data is to spend more money. Not to earn trust. To buy outcomes.
The Conflict Nobody Is Writing About
Crypto and AI are not natural allies. They are co-investing in the same candidates for opposite legislative reasons.
Crypto wants the CLARITY Act, a market structure bill that would reduce SEC oversight of digital assets and establish a clear regulatory framework. The industry has been fighting for this for three years. Every pro-crypto candidate Fairshake elects is a vote for less federal scrutiny of the asset class that 45% of Americans already think is not worth the risk.
AI companies want something different. They are not pushing for deregulation. They are pushing for a national regulatory framework, the kind that establishes rules before states create a patchwork of conflicting laws. OpenAI and Anthropic both posted record lobbying spending in Q1 2026. They want federal standards that they helped write, which is a very different thing from wanting freedom from standards.
The candidates taking money from both Fairshake and Leading the Future will eventually have to choose between those positions. A vote that advances crypto deregulation could conflict with an AI framework vote. Nobody in the coverage of this story is asking what happens when the industries’ legislative goals collide inside the same Congress their money helped elect.
The Sherrod Brown Problem
The clearest example of what this money does in practice is Ohio.
Fairshake spent over $40 million in 2024 to help defeat Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who had been one of the most vocal critics of crypto’s political influence. Brown lost. He is running again in 2026. Fairshake remembers.
Brown’s argument was straightforward: an industry that has burned retail investors repeatedly, that facilitates sanctions evasion and state-sponsored theft at industrial scale, should not be buying Senate seats. That argument was not wrong in 2024. North Korean hackers have stolen $577 million in crypto in 2026 alone. The $2 billion retail investors lost on the Trump memecoin in its first 19 days has not been recovered. The CLARITY Act itself stalled partly because Congress could not separate crypto regulation from the Trump family’s financial interests in the industry.
Fairshake’s answer to all of that is to spend more money.
What the Backlash Math Looks Like
Former Ohio Representative Jim Renacci put it plainly to Politico: “I think it’s always going to be an issue if they see somebody have cryptocurrency backing.”
The poll supports that instinct. In hypothetical matchups, respondents were significantly less likely to support candidates backed by groups pushing looser AI regulations than those backed by groups calling for tighter tech rules. The spending is not just failing to move opinion. It is creating a target.
A 41% plurality of Americans already say special interest groups have too much influence over US politics. The industries spending $103 million on midterms are not exactly positioned to argue otherwise. And right now, only 3% of voters know Fairshake exists.
When the other 97% find out, the industries are betting their candidates will already be in office.
That is the strategy. It is also the risk.
