Crypto Super PAC to Target Races in Ohio and Montana That Could Swing the Senate

The group spent millions of dollars in the Democratic Senate primary in California and is looking to influence other races in the general election.

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Senators John Tester of Montana, left, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are among the targets for a cryptocurrency industry super PAC, Fairshake, in this year’s general election.

Fresh from spending more than $10 million to help defeat Representative Katie Porter, a progressive Democrat, in California’s open Senate race, the crypto industry’s big new super PAC has identified its next political targets for this fall. Atop the list are two races featuring the most endangered Democrats up for re-election, in Ohio and Montana.

The crypto industry and its aligned super PACs, which entered 2024 with more than $80 million in the bank, are aiming to use their financial and political might both to elect allies and ultimately shape a favorable set of regulations in Congress.

“How do people understand that crypto is real — that it’s a real issue?” said Kara Calvert, the head of U.S. policy at Coinbase, one of the largest crypto trading platforms. “When you have $85 million behind an issue, that’s pretty real.”

Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for Fairshake, the biggest of a group of three new crypto super PACs, said the super PAC had made the decision to play in four Senate races this year: the Democratic primaries in Maryland and Michigan, as well as the general elections in Ohio, where Senator Sherrod Brown is up for re-election, and Montana, where Senator Jon Tester faces a serious challenge.

“We’ll have the resources to affect races and the makeup of institutions at every level,” Mr. Vlasto said. “And we’ll leverage those assets strategically to maximize their impact in order to build a sustainable, bipartisan crypto and blockchain coalition.”

Mr. Brown and Mr. Tester are the only two incumbent Senate Democrats nationwide running in states that former President Donald J. Trump won in 2020, and Democrats must win both for the party to have any hope of maintaining their slim majority.

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