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90% of crypto's Illinois primary spending failed to achieve its objective

• Arainach 8mo ago
  Is there a writeup of the objectives of lobbying/spending here? Are specific bills/topics proposed for the upcoming session?
  • duped 8mo ago
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cryptocurrency-and-ai-industries-tested-their-influence-in-illinois-it-didnt-go-well https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cryptocurrency-and-ai-... They're concerned about regulation, as always. Note that this election has no impact over the current congress. Senators and Reps won't be seated until January.
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  • shagie 8mo ago
    Chicago is the home of the Chicago commodities exchange... and like New York has a bit of influence over businesses dealing with banking taking place in New York, so too does Illinois have influence over the regulations around the question of commodities and related markets. https://nationaltoday.com/us/il/chicago/news/2026/02/24/cme-offers-regulated-crypto-futures-trading/ https://nationaltoday.com/us/il/chicago/news/2026/02/24/cme-... https://businesslawreview.uchicago.edu/online-archive/commodity-futures-trading-commission-correct-regulator-virtual-currency-spot-market https://businesslawreview.uchicago.edu/online-archive/commod... Another bit is things like sports betting laws... and how they interact with prediction markets. https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/sports-betting-tax-becomes-battleground-between-chicago-and-state-lawmakers/ https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/sports-betting-tax-beco... https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/illinois-regulators-say-prediction-markets-are-illegal-gambling-but-bettors-and-the-trump-family-love-them/ https://capitolnewsillinois.com/news/illinois-regulators-say...
    • selectodude 8mo ago
      Furthermore a fair number of the largest crypto trading firms (DRW, Jump, Wolverine) are HQ’d in Chicago.
• daft_pink 8mo ago
  Pretty sure primary sending isn’t very helpful when it’s intended to change election results. What’s helpful is donating to people who you already know are going to win so that they do you favors later on.
  • itsdesmond 8mo ago
    The article suggests something like 90% of their spend was intended to change results. Can you help me understand your comment? I don’t get it.
    • arijun 8mo ago
      They are saying that was a bad strategy and not the usual one. I have no idea to what extent that’s true.
      • shimman 8mo ago
        It's the same strategy they used in 2024 to a great effect: if you are against the crypto industry we will attack you. Not support the other candidate, but just attack you. The intention is to not waste money on supporting candidates, but to attack those that challenge the crypto industry. It's a very unique strategy in US politics that has been deployed quite successfully at varying times (Bill Clinton, uber, airbnb). Now with the elites being so brazen about their opulence they're taking it to the extreme.
    • vasco 8mo ago
      He means in politics you don't need to bet on the winning horse, you can just bribe him after he wins. Or bet on both.
      • itsdesmond 8mo ago
        Sure but like… he’s just some fucking guy on a tech comment thread (as are we all). You don’t think the professional bribe guys know a thing or two about doing bribes? Nah. The people who won wouldn’t take their money. It had to be those losers. This is not a story about people being bad at bribing, it’s a story about The people rejecting candidates who were open to taking those bribes. Not necessarily because they took crypto money, more because shit policy positions usually come in sets, and we’re not into it.
• tptacek 8mo ago
  Nobody's lobbying achieved objectives in the Illinois primary, which is more a statement about the ineffectiveness of lobbying (at least in these kinds of races) than anything else. The candidates that won were the candidates you'd expect to win given demographics and the recent political history of the region.
  • onlyrealcuzzo 8mo ago
    It's interesting how much money is spent lobbying at the primary stage, when you can always just shop around congress AFTER the electins for the cheapest whore to buy out and find someone for pennies on the dollar.
    • epolanski 8mo ago
      Not easy and effective post election . The candidate doesn't own you anything and cannot receive donations directly anymore. Thus you get to pull the corruption, illegal, or indirect, less effective, cards. Supporting the candidate to get him elected is much different.
      • drysine 8mo ago
        owe
      • SoftTalker 8mo ago
        > cannot receive donations directly anymore Yet they all seem to exit office quite wealthy, despite their rather modest government salaries.
        • actionfromafar 8mo ago
          Not all.
    • HDThoreaun 8mo ago
      Maybe it's a sign that your "pennies on the dollar" theory needs some work?
• jmyeet 8mo ago
  You can't talk about what happened in the Illinois primaries without talking about the other PACs who spent big, specifically AIPAC and other dark-money Israel-affiliated PACs that spent to defeat pro-Palestinian candidates (eg Kat Abugazaleh) without ever once mentioning Israel [1]. It's far more accurate to say that pro-Zionist groups spent big in the Illinois primary and got mixed results. Crypto just went along for the ride. There is a war in the Democratic Party between anti-genocide candidates, who enjoy 90% support in the base, and the establishment who is doing everything to defeat them, up to and including intentionally losing the 2024 presidential election [3]. Nobody cares about crypto. [1]: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illinois-primary-results-00833615 https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illino... [2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead-americans-middle-east-sympathies.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead... [3]: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-gaza-harris/ https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-gaza-...
  • ourmandave 8mo ago
    I don't understand why they'd throw an election so the other pro-Israel side can win.
    • t-3 8mo ago
      They didn't throw the election per se, they just didn't try very hard to win a fight they could easily lose. Why burn bridges with a very important ally over something that might not end up being your problem?
  • tptacek 8mo ago
    This is just activist cope. Voters in Illinois CD7, where I live, didn't put Melissa Conyears-Ervin (lavishly supported by AIPAC) into a tight second-place run against La Shawn Ford because Israel bamboozled them. If you look at the map of where the MCE votes came from, it's very unlikely any of them gave a shit about Israel whatsoever. Her votes followed the exact same pattern as they did in 2024, when she gave Danny Davis (the long-term incumbent) a run for his money, and when she wasn't supported by AIPAC at all. In the Illinois 9th, AIPAC supported candidate seemingly at random in an attempt to split the progressive vote and clear a path for Laura Fine. Didn't work there either. It may very well be the case that Israel is disfavored by a strong majority of Illinois Democrats (I'd certainly understand why). What your analysis misses is salience: people care about lots of things they don't vote about. Poll primary voters here; you will find a small group of them that think Israel is the most important issue in the district (they will be almost uniformly white PMC voters and they'll be disproportionately online). Mostly you're going to find voters that (a) hate Trump and (b) are concerned about the economy. It's clearly not the case that "anti-genocide candidates" enjoy a 90% share of the Illinois Democratic primary electorate, because they didn't win.
• buddhistdude 8mo ago
  "The cryptocurrency industry super PACs dumped $14.2 million into the Illinois primaries. 90% of that – $12.8 million – was wasted, in that it went to opposing Democratic candidates who won their primaries" I read that as them having mistakenly sent the cryptos to the "opposing candidate"
  • Quinner 8mo ago
    The quote is the wrong way of looking at this. The typical rate of successful primary challenges is only 3%. If you take that to 10% its an enormous success, incumbents will say "if I oppose crypto then I triple my odds of losing in a primary, better not do that."
    • DFHippie 8mo ago
      It's not quite like that, though. 90% of their funding supported candidates that lost or opposed candidates that won -- they opposed the winning outcome. They supported the winning outcome with the remaining 10% of their funds, but here they pushed on the side of the contest which was already a lock anyway. So it isn't clear that any of the money they spent achieved anything.
      • IshKebab 8mo ago
        What? Are you trying to say their spending had no effect because their spending had no effect?
  • KellyCriterion 8mo ago
    ..could be a built-in feature of the matter? :-D
• BurningFrog 8mo ago
  Fortunately, you can't typically "buy" elections by donating to campaigns. Campaign spending does have an effect for unknown candidates, but once the voters know who you are and what you stand for, further spending doesn't move the needle. It's true that the campaign with most money usually wins, but that does not the money caused the win! One way to think about it is that the most popular candidate naturally gets the most donations, just like they get the most votes. It can also be a good investment to be on good terms with the future winner.
  • lagniappe 8mo ago
    >Fortunately, you can't typically "buy" elections by donating to campaigns. Having a Fox Mulder moment, because I too, want to believe. However, it makes me think, if it didn't work to some degree, whatever that may be, it wouldn't be common.
    • bombcar 8mo ago
      Having been involved in some political campaigns and movements, I totally believe that nobody knows the ROI on where the dollars are going.
    • HDThoreaun 8mo ago
      Political campaigns certainly need money, but there are heavily diminishing returns pretty quickly. In races where all the candidates have money just throwing more in doesnt seem to accomplish much.
    • BurningFrog 8mo ago
      This is the mainstream view in political science/economics, since well designed studies consistently show these results. I won't spend hours chasing down such studies. If you're interested, ask an AI for references! Donating to the winner means you're on good terms with the future holder of power. This "works" in the sense that you can expect favors in return, but this is just lowkey corruption, not affecting the election result. Note that candidates who are guaranteed to win often get substantial donations!
  • 8mo ago
• mmahd7456 8mo ago
  Throwing money at a Republican primary candidate in Illinois is probably as ineffective as it would be in New York. The big cities are just too deeply Democratic.
  • lern_too_spel 8mo ago
    It's a primary. They put money against one Democrat in the hopes that some other Democrat who doesn't know about regulating crypto grifts will win.
    • ETH_start 8mo ago
      "Regulating crypto grifts" is a nice euphemism for prohibiting mutually voluntary economic interactions involving digital currency, and putting open source developers in prison: https://freeromanstorm.com/ https://freeromanstorm.com/ "DOJ determined to set a precedent Tornado Cash is an open source software protocol that uses smart contracts and a cryptographic method known as zero-knowledge proofs to enable users to conduct private transactions on the blockchain. Neither Roman Storm, nor any other person has the ability to stop or modify this immutable, unstoppable protocol.. In this context, Tornado Cash operates much like the Bitcoin or Ethereum network. The prosecution of Roman Storm by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) in U.S. v. Storm for his role in developing Tornado Cash will set a chilling precedent for the crypto industry by holding developers liable for how third parties use their open-source code. The case hinges on allegations that Storm violated 18 U.S.C. § 1960 by operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, despite Tornado Cash being a non-custodial protocol where users retain full control of their funds, challenging the applicability of Section 1960 to decentralized software. The money laundering conspiracy charge raises concerns about whether developers can be criminally accountable for the actions of bad actors, like North Korea’s Lazarus Group, who used Tornado Cash to obscure illicit transactions. A conviction could deter innovation by discouraging developers from creating privacy-focused tools, fearing prosecution for misuse beyond their control, while an acquittal might affirm that writing open-source code is protected speech under the First Amendment. The outcome will likely shape the legal boundaries of developer liability and the future of decentralized finance (DeFi), impacting how regulators approach immutable protocols."
• lern_too_spel 8mo ago
  Good. I vote against anybody who is supported by crypto pacs as one of my top priorities in primaries. Unfortunately, Schiff beat Porter for the Senate seat in California, but happily the grifting Rishi Kumar continues to lose every seat he runs for.
• stuaxo 8mo ago
  This sounds like a good thing.
• momoddo 8mo ago
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