The biggest name and biggest crypto backer in the 2022 election cycle is now awaiting prison time on fraud and conspiracy charges. But new super PACs have emerged as successors to the collapsed Sam Bankman-Fried empire and are making their first big bet of the 2024 election cycle: trying to destroy Rep. Katie Porter, a Democrat running in the California Senate primary next month .
The largest new crypto-focused super PAC, Fairshake, began reserving millions of dollars in television and digital advertising across California late Monday and could be a major player in the final three weeks of the race.
Fairshake disclosed in federal filings two weeks ago that it and two affiliated super PACs had collectively raised about $80 million in 2023, with most of the money coming from three major cryptocurrency players: Coinbase, Ripple Labs and Andreessen Horowitz.
In the California Senate race, Ms. Porter is running against Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, and Rep. Barbara Lee, another Democrat, as well as Steve Garvey, a Republican and former baseball player. The top two finishers in the March primaries advance to November, even though both are Democrats.
In a statement, Fairshake accused Ms. Porter of taking campaign funds from other industries and misleading the state about her record, saying, “Katie Porter says one thing and does another.”
The group is planning an anti-Porter advertising campaign and began booking time at markets across the state on Monday.
It’s not entirely clear what it is about Ms. Porter that has drawn the crypto industry’s ire, aside from her record as a progressive who favored regulating the industry to better benefit consumers and who made sure that a few years ago Criticism of a finance chief sparked a viral moment.
The crypto financiers behind Fairshake and its two affiliated groups, Protect Progress and Defend American Jobs, are pretty open about their agenda: They want to ensure a favorable regulatory framework as the federal government considers how to regulate the crypto industry and political spending on it use it.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who personally donated $1 million in September, told Axios that same month: “Money moves the needle. Good or bad, that’s how our system works.”
Mr. Armstrong said at the time: “If you look at the oil and gas lobby or the banking lobby, I mean, they spend, I don’t know, in the order of $100 million a year.” Interestingly, Fairshake’s statement said named some of the same industries that support Ms. Porter.
The new crypto megagroup and its affiliates have attracted prominent Democratic and Republican consulting firms.
Fairshake has previously paid money to Impact Research, a polling firm that worked for President Biden in 2020, and Jamestown Associates, an advertising firm that produced commercials for former President Donald J. Trump that same year. Records show the group employs two other well-known polling firms: Schoen Survey Research, founded by Doug Schoen, and Global Strategy Group, which works for a broad spectrum of congressional Democrats.
On Capitol Hill, Ms. Porter was a close ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, who was once her professor at Harvard Law School. Ms. Warren has been an outspoken critic of the lax regulations surrounding cryptocurrencies, and Ms. Porter once signed a letter with Ms. Warren to Texas regulators about crypto, according to crypto news tracking site Bitcoin.com.
Mr. Schiff, who fought to put Mr. Garvey ahead of Ms. Porter in the general election, published a statement on the crypto industry on his politics page, writing about the need to promote such innovative industries. “We must develop comprehensive regulatory frameworks to ensure these companies and jobs stay and grow here,” the site says.
Fairshake and its affiliated groups have already spent relatively small sums on other races, on candidates like Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, last year before he announced his retirement.
Affiliated crypto group Protect Progress’s other biggest expenditure to date was supporting Shomari Figures, a Democrat running for House of Representatives in Alabama. On the topic page of his website, Mr. Figures emphasizes the importance of supporting cryptocurrencies and writes that he will work to “leverage the new landscape around digital assets like cryptocurrencies to stimulate innovation and technological advancement.”
Mr. Figures has benefited from nearly $750,000 in crypto spending since late January — reminiscent of the huge sums Mr. Bankman-Fried and others poured into congressional races in 2022.
Mr Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading firm FTX collapsed in late 2022 and he was arrested and charged with fraud following the multi-billion dollar implosion. He was found guilty in November.
Source link
2024-02-13 10:03:07
www.nytimes.com
