Thoughts tagged "politics"

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Campaign finance complaint filed regarding Coinbase

Last week, Public Citizen ’s Rick Claypool and I filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission based on my research into apparent campaign finance violations by the Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange.

Read the full complaint and my updated article.

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The two candidates in today’s primaries that received substantial backing from cryptocurrency PACs both won their primaries.

1. John Curtis defeated Trent Staggs in the Republican Utah Senate primary, with the help of $1.7 million in crypto industry funding.

2. George Latimer defeated Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary for NY H-16, with the help of $2 million in crypto industry funding.

Ads run by these PACs made no mention of crypto or technology. In the NY race, ads from Fairshake seemed to align very closely with AIPAC’s aggressive campaign against Bowman, echoing their messaging accusing him of antisemitism.

“Defend American Jobs” was the PAC splashing out in the Utah race. They’re the Republican-focused crypto super PAC; “Protect Progress” is the Democrat counterpart.

Though Fairshake (nominally nonpartisan, and by far the highest fundraiser of the crypto PACs) previously made identical donations to both, they’ve just made another $5 million donation to Defend American Jobs without a corresponding donation to Protect Progress.

Defend American Jobs has raised $14.7 million so far this cycle; Protect Progress has raised $10.3 million.

Here's a glimpse at the spending in each race.

Charts showing amounts raised by each candidate, and amounts spent by outside groups to support or oppose. John Curtis raised around $3.8M, $9.2M was spent to support him, and $3.5M of that support came from the crypto industry. Brad R. Wilson raised $5M. Trent Staggs raised $1.25M, $900k was spent to support him, and $1.9M was spent to oppose him, $1.5M of which came from the crypto industry. Jason Walton raised $2.9M.
Charts showing amounts raised by each candidate, and amounts spent by outside groups to support or oppose. Jamaal Bowman raised around $4.3M, $1.9M was spent to support him, and $12M was spent to oppose him, $2.1M of which came from the crypto industry. George Latimer raised $5.8M. $5.6M was spent to support him, and $1.1M was spent to oppose.

Other outside spending for Curtis mostly came from a super PAC called Conservative Values for Utah, with Defend American Jobs pitching in $5M last minute.

And as I mentioned, Bowman’s other opposition primarily came from AIPAC's UDP.