Fairshake-affiliated political action committees spent roughly $3.6 million across three states on August 18. They won most of their targeted races. The one they spent the most on, they lost, as Cointelegraph reported.
Protect Progress, a Democrat-aligned super PAC tied to the crypto industry’s dominant campaign fund Fairshake, put more than $2 million into negative advertising against Oliver Gilbert in Florida’s 24th congressional district. Gilbert won the Democratic primary regardless. He took 34.4% of the vote and defeated challengers Shevrin Jones and Kendrick Meek, per results published by the New York Times.
That sum was the single largest spend of the night for the Fairshake network. It went for nothing.
The loss complicates an otherwise productive Tuesday for the PAC. Defend American Jobs, Fairshake’s Republican-aligned arm, spent a combined $1.5 million supporting three candidates: Nick Begich in Alaska’s at-large district, Sydney Gruters in Florida’s 16th district, and Representative Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s Senate race. Gruters and Hageman won. Begich was expected to advance. Protect Progress also spent more than $150,000 on supportive media for Lois Frankel, who won her primary in Florida’s 23rd district.
Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter framed the overall showing as progress. “We’re just getting started building the largest pro-crypto Congress in history,” Vetter said.
The Florida loss drew scrutiny beyond the result itself. The Miami Herald reported on August 12 that the Protect Progress ads included fabricated Miami Herald headlines misrepresenting Gilbert’s positions. A PAC spokesperson defended the ads, telling the Herald that “the underlying facts in our ad are true.”
Gilbert had a blunter read. He called the effort “crypto con artists trying to buy a Democratic primary” backed by “Donald Trump’s tech billionaire buddies,” according to the Herald. He did not mention the crypto industry or the ads in his acceptance speech Tuesday night.
The fabricated-headline tactic invites the kind of scrutiny that a PAC claiming policy credibility usually works to avoid.
The spending represents a fraction of what Fairshake has committed for the cycle. The committee reported a $193 million war chest as of January. It spent more than $130 million on ads during the 2024 election cycle, supporting candidates it considered pro-crypto and opposing those who voted against the industry’s interests. As of June, Fairshake had already spent more than $82 million on races ahead of the November midterms, according to reporting by Public Citizen cited by Cointelegraph.
The stakes are legislative. The House passed the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the CLARITY Act, in July 2025 on a 294-134 bipartisan vote. Both chambers are on recess until September. The Senate is then scheduled to take up a cloture motion on the bill. Many Senate Democrats have pushed for stronger ethics provisions tied to the Trump family’s crypto investments before moving forward.
Lawmakers elected in November could determine whether CLARITY reaches the president’s desk if the current session does not act before 2027. A Congress with more members sympathetic to digital asset firms would improve the bill’s odds. One with more skeptics would not.
Fairshake’s Tuesday record stands at wins in four races and one costly loss. The PAC’s strategy remains largely intact entering the general election. The Florida result, though, gives opponents material. A $2 million miss with a controversy over ad integrity attached is not the return the industry’s largest political vehicle wanted to show.
