Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown is facing déjà vu as he stares down the massive war chest assembled by cryptocurrency groups determined to stop the former senator from getting his old job back.
Once one of crypto’s toughest Capitol Hill critics, who accused digital assets of operating as a gateway to illegal activity and harming consumers, Brown has quietly adopted a muted go-to response on the campaign trail as he seeks to topple a crypto-friendly rival, Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH).
Brown’s position is far more calculated and measured after pro-crypto entities declared the former Senate banking committee chairman persona non grata in 2024, dumping $40 million to sink his reelection against now-Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH).
In response to detailed questions about whether Brown’s positions on the industry have changed and his views on pro-crypto action taken by Congress since his departure, his campaign recycled a recent statement to Puck News that did not clarify whether the former senator’s hostilities toward digital assets remained.
“Sherrod Brown recognizes that cryptocurrency is a part of America’s economy,” said Brown campaign manager Patrick Eisenhauer, offering a revised version of a boilerplate response Brown himself has used in recent months. “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.”
Brown’s more neutral tone appears to have done little to persuade the industry not to wage another money war in the Buckeye State, a race that Senate Democrats see as pivotal to retaking the upper chamber from Republicans.
The latest crypto-backed money opposing Brown clocks in at $8 million from Sentinel Action Fund super PAC, which supports conservative pro-crypto candidates, and its sister advocacy group Right Vote. The fund’s president, Jessica Anderson, criticized Brown as someone who “stood in the way of pro-innovation policies when it comes to digital assets.”
In 2024, the pro-cryptocurrency PAC Fairshake was the fundraising juggernaut whose affiliated campaign arms used $40 million to help take down Brown. Fairshake declined to comment for this story but has previously stated its interest in opposing “anti-crypto candidates — in Ohio and nationwide.” It spent more than $100 million in the 2024 cycle on pro-crypto House and Senate candidates from both parties. Fairshake had upwards of $170 million in cash on hand as of February.
“[Brown] was the single roadblock to advancing and modernizing our financial systems,” Husted told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t think anybody’s going to forget that.”
The industry’s influence in 2024 has already paid dividends in the form of pro-crypto policies from lawmakers aimed at legitimizing and regulating digital assets as their growth explodes.
Congress passed the bipartisan GENIUS Act last year to establish first-of-its-kind federal regulations for stablecoins that tie digital assets to the U.S. dollar or other stable assets. Senior officials to President Donald Trump, whose family has a large stake in a multibillion-dollar crypto company, are urging lawmakers to pass the CLARITY Act for broader market structure regulations amid disputes between the banking and crypto worlds.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) is among the smaller pool of Democrats whom crypto heavily supported in her 2024 battleground contest. In an interview, the first-term senator and former congresswoman attributed the support to her previous record in the House and knowledge of the industry, offering a cautionary tale to both parties to study up on the growing sector.
“I think there’s a lot of people, frankly, on both sides of the aisle who are just kind of ignoring the issue,” Slotkin said. “They’re voting party-line on things, and on a new technology like this, I just think that that shows laziness and lack of interest to the industry that is here to stay.”
She emphasized that while she does not “owe anyone a vote on anything,” she does “owe them to be an educated, engaged leader who’s knowledgeable about the issues.”
Democratic strategist Jeff Rusnak, who worked on Brown’s 2006 campaign, holds a different philosophy toward crypto. He views the industry’s all-in venture into campaign politics as placing a target on its back that it could come to regret if crypto’s preferred candidates don’t prevail in the November midterms.
“What they did in ’24 won’t necessarily work in ’26,” Rusnak said. “I think they should think long and hard about what it means when you invest those kinds of dollars and you don’t succeed.”
As for Moreno, there’s no love lost between him and his former Democratic rival.
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Moreno, a former luxury car salesman, did not mince words in calling Brown, a former three-term senator, an “idiot” on crypto and the “ultimate political cicada” for his now-muted stance on crypto and for supporting some tariffs in the past but now opposing those from Trump.
“’Send me to Washington, D.C., and I’ll fix it,’ says Sherrod Brown, after having spent 30 years in Washington, D.C.,” Moreno said. “It’s a joke.”