The crypto industry’s leading political action committee, Fairshake, scored another win on Tuesday after Barry Moore, the Alabama Republican it backed with more than $12 million, won his state’s GOP Senate primary runoff. Moore defeated former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson, taking almost 56% of the vote, and is now favored to win November’s general election given Alabama’s heavily Republican electorate.
Record Crypto Spending Delivers a Win
Moore drew more than $12 million from Fairshake, the super PAC’s most extensive spending of the cycle so far, surpassing every other congressional candidate this year. Fairshake is funded mainly by three crypto-industry backers: Coinbase, a16z Crypto and Ripple. A Fairshake spokesman, Geoff Vetter, said the group’s biggest spend of the cycle had yielded another pro-innovation candidate in the Senate, adding that with roughly $150 million still on hand it intends to keep building what it calls the largest pro-crypto caucus in history.
Moore, a Trump loyalist who as a member of Congress has voted in favor of every major piece of crypto legislation, reached the runoff after falling short of the 50% threshold in May’s initial primary. His win adds to a strong run of results for the PAC, which has backed a long roster of successful primary candidates this cycle.
What This Means for the Industry
The result lands as Congress weighs major crypto legislation on stablecoins and market structure, the policy fights that have driven the industry’s heavy spending on friendly candidates. Moore’s record of backing every major crypto bill is exactly the profile Fairshake has spent this cycle trying to put in the Senate.
The win is unlikely to be Fairshake’s last test this cycle. The same week, the PAC put $735,000 behind Representative Kevin Hern, who won his Republican Senate primary in Oklahoma. The group has not won everywhere: earlier this year it spent more than $10 million in Illinois trying to defeat Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who won her Democratic primary anyway. But with a large war chest still to deploy, its concentrated spending on targeted races is shaping up as one of the more effective political strategies in this year’s midterms.
