Fairshake to pour a total of $8.6 million into Illinois races ahead of US midterms

Fairshake, a political action committee (PAC) backed by the crypto-asset industry, has been found to have injected additional funding into Illinois legislative races ahead of the US midterm elections.

According to Cointelegraph on the 9th (local time), Fairshake said in a filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that it spent an additional $16,000 on an advertising campaign opposing La Shawn Ford, who has declared his candidacy for the Illinois House of Representatives. This brought Fairshake’s total spending related to the race to about $1.8 million.

Earlier, Fairshake was also reported to have spent more than $5.5 million on ads opposing Juliana Stratton, Illinois’ lieutenant governor, in her bid for the US Senate.

Groups affiliated with Fairshake have also stepped up spending. Protect Progress, a group supporting Democratic candidates, spent about $84,000 on ads backing Nikki Budzinski, who is running for the House, and used about $90,000 for Robin Kelly’s Senate campaign.

According to local outlet The Daily Northwestern, the total amount deployed in Illinois races by Fairshake and related groups was tallied at about $8.6 million. That is roughly six times the amount spent on Midwestern races in 2024.

Fairshake is a political fundraising group supported by crypto firms such as Ripple Labs and Coinbase, and as of January it held funds totaling about $193 million. The group has publicly stated that in the 2026 elections it will “support politicians friendly to the crypto industry and push back against those who oppose it.”