Eleanor Terrett@EleanorTerrett
🚨NEW: The $2.5 trillion crypto industry has bet on a handful of candidates in tonight’s closely watched Texas primary runoffs, with crypto-backed PACs deploying money into some of the state’s most competitive races. Here's the breakdown:
📌@tether-backed @Fellowship_PAC reported spending $500K on ads supporting @KenPaxtonTX's bid for TX Senate seat against incumbent @JohnCornyn. The spend followed President Trump’s endorsement of Paxton and came after the PAC rescinded a planned $1.75M ad buy for Paxton in April.
📌As I scooped last week, the newly launched @BlockchainLF donated a thus-far undisclosed amount to @CDMenefee, the Democrat running to unseat @RepAlGreen in TX-18. It also donated to @JonBonckTX, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for the open TX-38 Congressional seat.
📌Fairshake and its affiliates, crypto’s largest Super PAC network, started the year with a roughly $193M war chest and have spent across a handful of Texas races, including in TX-18 where the network spent $6.5M supporting Menefee and over $2.5M opposing Green.
It also spent a combined $1.8M across a handful of GOP primary runoffs including $453K supporting @AlexMealerTX in TX-9, $426K for @SellForTexas19 in TX-19, $607K for @CarlosForTexas in TX-35, and $348K for Bonck in TX-38.
