The Senate Race Giving Big Tech The Chills

A Silicon Valley nightmare could be brewing in Ohio.

Some of the biggest names in technology are dumping money into efforts to keep former Sen. Sherrod Brown out of Washington. But with the populist Democrat holding a narrow polling lead just ahead of Election Day, some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful players are staring at the prospect of a humiliating defeat that could embolden politicians in both parties to take on the industry.

Cryptocurrency heavyweights like Coinbase, Ripple and the venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz are financing a super PAC operation that has unleashed a staggering $55 million against Brown’s comeback bid. And his GOP opponent, Sen. Jon Husted, has collected checks from prominent figures in tech, ranging from Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to Microsoft President Brad Smith.

“The biggest tell in politics is money coming into a race,” said former Rep. Tim Ryan, a one-time Ohio Democratic Senate candidate who now co-leads a pro-crypto group called the Blockchain Innovation Project and previously served on a Coinbase advisory board. “All the evidence is that this is a high priority for the crypto industry and Big Tech.”

It’s a high-stakes gamble for Silicon Valley titans that is making some in the tech world nervous. In interviews with a dozen tech and crypto industry officials, many described the race as one of the most consequential in the country for the industry’s political influence. Some warned that a Brown victory could undermine crypto’s vaunted political operation and offer a new playbook for politicians looking to capitalize on voter anger over AI data centers. If he loses, however, it would give crypto giants another high-profile political victory and raise questions about the effectiveness of anti-data center messaging.

Brown, a longtime critic of corporate power in Washington, has expanded his populist message this cycle to take aim at Silicon Valley. He painted Husted as “the face of data centers” in Ohio, running ads that accuse him of supporting tech interests. And he has vowed on the trail to “stand up to Big Tech” and sought to capitalize on the millions in spending against him from the crypto super PAC network known as Fairshake.

“That’s why these data center billionaires in this crypto crowd [have] come to Ohio,” Brown told a Cleveland-area ABC affiliate last month. The money they are spending against him, he said, is “because they know I'll hold them accountable.”

The risks of Brown’s return are striking for the crypto sector. The crypto-funded Fairshake super PAC group has spent well over $100 million to help elect industry-friendly figures in races around the country this cycle. But its biggest investment by far has been in Ohio, where it has blown past the roughly $40 million that it spent to help defeat Brown in 2024 after three terms in the Senate.

Brown was a leading critic of the crypto industry when he served as Senate Banking Committee chair, though the crypto PAC’s ads do not focus on crypto. Unlike in 2024, Brown has gone on offense against the crypto spending, in part by tying it to the data center issue.

Lobbyists are beginning to sweat the signal that his return would send.

“In the 2028 cycle, if Sherrod Brown wins, it is going to further neuter Fairshake’s perceived Sword of Damocles that they hang over candidates,” said one GOP crypto lobbyist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive dynamics within the industry. On AI, “an anti-data center campaign that’s triumphant in a red state is very problematic for the next 10 years of election cycles,” the person said.

Many in the tech and crypto world are bracing for the Ohio race to help set the stage for the next Congress — and, in turn, 2028.

“This is definitely the most important race, at least in this current landscape, in terms of dictating the attitude towards tech and crypto for the next Congress,” said Ron Hammond, a crypto lobbyist who is head of policy and advocacy at the digital asset trading firm Wintermute and previously worked as an aide to Ohio GOP Rep. Warren Davidson.

Few other candidates have focused their campaign on fighting data centers as much as Brown, and top tech industry figures say they are watching the results closely.

If Brown “outperforms himself historically in rural areas, and in exit polls in those areas, voters cite data centers, then, yes, alarm bells will ring,” a lobbyist who works in tech policy said. But given Brown’s high name ID in the state and other issues factoring into voters’ decisions, a Democratic victory with predictable margins would make the data center issue “almost table stakes.”

“I think this will be a conversation that people are going to have on the other side of the election,” said Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s head of global affairs.

Though Lehane said data centers alone are unlikely to move voters, Brown and others are using them as “a really good proxy to drive home an affordability issue,” he said. In the face of the backlash against data centers, OpenAI and other developers have promised to provide community benefits and cover electricity increases if residents embrace the construction.

Brown’s campaign, in one ad, called Husted the “face of data centers.” In another, he is said to be the “chief reason Ohio has so many data centers.” His campaign has even stood up billboards across the state encouraging passersby to visit a website, paid for by Brown’s campaign, blaming Husted for nearly all data centers in the state.

Husted says Brown has misrepresented his view on data center issues and pointed to his work to pass a bill known as the Ratepayer Protection Act that aims to mitigate cost increases associated with data centers. Senate Democrats blocked the legislation before leaving Washington ahead of the election.

“After failing Ohio families during his 32 years in Washington, Sherrod Brown is once again resorting to lies instead of facing his abysmal record head-on,” Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce said in a statement. “Sherrod Brown and his friends would rather play politics and stick Ohio families with higher electric bills than pass a commonsense solution. It’s despicable.”

Brown campaign spokesperson Lauren Chou said Husted “led the charge to bring data centers to Ohio, forcing Ohioans to pay thousands more in higher electric bills and giving giant out-of-state corporations billions of dollars in out-of-control tax breaks.”

Despite the rhetoric, the two candidates have somewhat similar policy positions on how to regulate the computing centers going forward. Neither has called for a moratorium on data center construction, as some others have, and both say they support local control measures.

Brown has also some Silicon Valley support, including from the crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

Many factors are at play in Ohio beyond just tech. Like other Democrats around the country, Brown is benefiting from a favorable national environment created by President Donald Trump’s unpopularity and voters’ concerns about high prices. And he is a well-known figure in Ohio who has built a distinct populist brand that has helped him outperform other Democrats in an increasingly red state before. Some tech advocates caution against extrapolating the political viability of data centers from a single race where voters may be casting their ballots on other issues.

“It’s hard to see, especially in a statewide race, data centers really being the dispositive issue,” said Paul Lekas, who leads government affairs and public policy at tech industry group the Software and Information Industry Association. “I think there are so many different factors at play here.”

Money from non-tech outside groups has also flooded the race in Ohio. It has attracted more than $500 million in ad spending, according to data from AdImpact — a titanic sum that could mute the impact of the crypto and tech spending. The Fairshake PAC that is spending in Ohio, Defend American Jobs, is the fourth-largest spender in the race, according to AdImpact.

There also are competing priorities for Big Tech, and its biggest billionaire donors that could take at least some of the sting out of a loss in Ohio. In California, where a one-time wealth tax posed what some billionaire tech targets described as an almost existential threat to their standing in the Golden State, Silicon Valley’s biggest donors have formed a powerful bloc, dropping hundreds of millions into TV ads to defeat the union-backed proposal on Tuesday’s ballot.

But given the role tech issues have played in Ohio — which was once considered a key swing state but has turned increasingly red in recent years — AI skeptics hope a Brown victory will provide 2028 presidential hopefuls a reason to target Big Tech and data centers.

“I think if he wins, data centers are going to be a huge part of it,” said Charlie Blaettler, political director of Guardrails Alliance, a group that is pressuring Democrats to renounce tech spending in their races. “And it should send a message to Democrats: You don’t need to be afraid on this issue.”