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The cryptocurrency industry spent big and lost often in this week’s Illinois primaries.
As the industry prepares to make massive donations in the 2026 midterm elections to replicate its success in 2024, the Illinois losses mark an early setback for firms that are trying to establish themselves as power players in American politics.
Crypto companies flooded the state’s Democratic primaries with millions of dollars to promote candidates they believed would have a light touch when it came to regulating digital assets. AI firms, meanwhile, backed opposing candidates and seemed to cancel each other out.
Using Super Pacs that are allowed to spend unlimited sums of money, crypto and AI companies ran television advertising and distributed campaign fliers that only occasionally alluded to their industries. Instead, the messaging focused on promises to combat Donald Trump’s administration and support liberal policies, a strategy used by other organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac).
But the coy strategy did not stop interventions by both the AI and crypto industries from becoming a lightning rod in the rowdy primaries in Illinois, where there was a rare glut of open seats that led to competitive races.
The crypto-backed political action committee Fairshake spent more than $10m against Juliana Stratton, the Illinois lieutenant governor, who ultimately won the Democratic nomination to succeed Dick Durbin, a US senator.
Stratton has no track record on crypto, but her boss does: her campaign is backed by JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, a billionaire who, alongside his wife, has donated $6m to the Super Pac supporting her candidacy. While Stratton served as lieutenant governor, Pritzker signed laws creating state-level crypto regulations, undermining the Clarity Act’s attempt to set a federal framework. The industry sees her as likely to follow in Pritzker’s footsteps.
Fairshake and Protect Progress, which is also tied to the crypto industry, spent millions more to unsuccessfully support Stratton’s main rivals, representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
In the Illinois US House primaries, the tech-backed groups’ campaign spending had mixed results.
La Shawn Ford, a state representative, who had supported state legislation regulating the AI and crypto industries, won the Democratic primary to succeed Danny Davis. Fairshake spent nearly $2.5m opposing Ford’s candidacy in a race that featured at least four other political groups spending against the progressive lawmaker or for his opponents.
It was only where the crypto industry spent the least amount of money that its candidate succeeded. Donna Miller, a Cook county commissioner, prevailed in the Democratic primary to succeed Kelly after Fairshake spent more than $800,000 against Robert Peters, a state senator, another progressive who supported legislation to regulate the crypto industry.
AI firms back opposing candidates
The late-stage infusions of cash into the Illinois races, including multiple competing donations by AI firms, totaled almost $20m across races and served as a declaration of AI and crypto’s political ambitions, raising the stakes in primaries that were already hotly contested.
“Corporate money is being used to paint corporate-backed candidates as fearless progressives,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a political group that works to elect anti-corporate progressives. “The question for the Democratic party is whether we elect people who actually believe in these positions or will we elect milquetoast candidates who give lip service to these values.”
The AI-backed Think Big Pac invested more than $1m to boost the candidacy of Jesse Jackson Jr, a former congressman who pleaded guilty in a fraud scandal in 2013. But Jobs and Democracy Pac, another AI-backed group, also mounted about $1m in negative campaign spending against Jackson during the race.
Think Big is a subsidiary of Leading the Future, a political group that is funded by major Silicon Valley executives, including the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who opposes federal regulations for AI and has been a staunch backer of the Republican president’s AI policies.
Jobs and Democracy Pac, by contrast, is funded by the AI company Anthropic, which favors some safety regulations on AI as the technology develops. Both Pacs opposed progressive candidates who called for relatively heavy regulations on the technologies and higher taxes on wealthy Americans.
Campaign finance experts and rank-and-file voters alike are still struggling with what to make of the technology industry’s political influence.
“They’re so new to the game that public opinion isn’t very well formed about them,” said Brian Gaines, a political science professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “You don’t get a clear signal for who is the progressive and who is the moderate on AI and crypto policies.”
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