Crypto Cash Could Threaten Sherrod Brown's Ohio Comeback. He’s Softening His Tune.

Sherrod Brown was among the cryptocurrency industry’s leading foes in the run-up to his 2024 election loss. Now, as a dark cloud of crypto industry campaign cash looms over his Senate comeback bid in Ohio, Brown’s campaign is softening its tune.

Fairshake, a super PAC group funded by leading crypto companies that entered the year with almost $200 million in the bank, is gearing up to aggressively deploy its massive war chest in the coming months to support industry allies and take down potential critics. As a longtime crypto skeptic running in a race that could determine control of the Senate, Brown is a major potential target. But his campaign appears to be eager to avoid a crypto onslaught, which he faced in 2024 from the same group.

“Sherrod Brown recognizes that cryptocurrency is a part of America’s economy,” his campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, said in a statement. “He’ll keep an open mind towards all issues as they come before the Senate, and work to ensure that as more people use cryptocurrency, it expands opportunity and lifts up Ohioans."

The softer approach is a sign that a staggeringly large super PAC war chest compiled by crypto companies is causing even the industry’s harshest critics to tread more carefully. Brown’s race is pivotal to the balance of power in the Senate, where Democrats are hoping to chip away at an increasingly fragile GOP majority that has largely embraced the crypto industry’s policy goals. Outside spending is poised to play a pivotal role in shaping the contest.

Known for his populist brand that centers around critiques of special interests and corporate power, Brown wasn’t always so muted about the crypto industry. When the first signs emerged that crypto companies were gearing up to try to help take Brown down in 2024, the then-Senate Banking Committee chair was defiant.

“Bring ’em on,” he said in December 2023, rattling off an array of scandals that were plaguing the industry at the time. “They clearly have betrayed the public interest.”

His campaign at the time embraced that posture: Brown’s 2024 campaign manager, Rachel Petri, told POLITICO that month that the former lawmaker “takes a back seat to no one when it comes to standing up to special interests — including crypto — to level the playing field for Ohioans and protect them from fraud.”

Fairshake-affiliated PACs later went on to plow more than $40 million into an effort to defeat Brown in 2024 — part of an audacious spending spree that helped elect industry-friendly lawmakers who have since advanced the sector’s agenda on Capitol Hill.

While Brown’s current position on crypto is hardly a ringing endorsement of the industry, the tone is a far cry from the approach he took as Senate Banking chair between 2021 and 2025, when he used his perch to highlight concerns about the use of crypto in illicit finance and the need for stricter consumer protections. Much of Congress took a more skeptical approach to crypto during his stint as chair, which overlapped with an array of major scandals involving digital asset firms, including the collapse of the Sam Bankman-Fried-run exchange FTX. But critically, Brown was a key roadblock to industry-friendly legislation championed by House Republicans.

The Ohio general election between Brown and Sen. Jon Husted, who was tapped to fill Vice President JD Vance’s seat, officially kicked off Wednesday after Brown coasted through a Democratic primary against a long-shot challenger. He said in his primary victory speech Tuesday night that “no one in the Senate is standing up to these corporations who raise your prices and who game the system.” He later added on MS NOW that voters view Husted "as a special interest guy."

Brown’s failed 2024 reelection campaign was one of the most expensive non-presidential races ever, thanks in large part to outside money. Brown’s campaign comfortably outraised his 2024 opponent, GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno. But outside groups spent more than $230 million to boost the former car dealer, compared to $154 million in outside spending backing Brown, according to an AdImpact analysis.

The $40 million chipped in by a crypto super PAC helped give Moreno the overall spending edge, and Republicans have openly credited the crypto money as the difference-maker. The current chair of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, said at a crypto conference last year that “literally, the industry put Bernie Moreno in the Senate.”

“Thank you to all of y’all for getting rid of Sherrod Brown,” Scott said.

Although Fairshake hasn’t yet said whether it plans to spend in Ohio again, many in the crypto world see Brown as a likely target. Despite a softer tune from his campaign team this cycle, it’s highly unlikely Brown — long one of his party’s leading progressive advocates for stricter financial industry regulation — would rubber-stamp industry-friendly crypto legislation in the same way Husted would, especially after crypto companies spent big to take him down in 2024.

And there’s an outside chance that Brown could retake the Senate Banking gavel if Democrats were to amend or make an exception to their rules to allow him to retain the seniority he built up during his first stint in the upper chamber. (Senate Democrats’ current rules stipulate that “seniority dates from a Member’s current entry into the Party Conference.”)

A Fairshake spokesperson said in a statement that the group doesn’t “comment on individual races or strategic decision-making.”

“Fairshake will continue to oppose anti-crypto politicians and support pro-crypto candidates who are committed to advancing pro-innovation policies that grow our economy,” said the spokesperson, Geoff Vetter.