Senate Blocks CLARITY Act as Crypto PAC Targets Brown

The US Senate voted 49 to 50 on Sept. 15 to block a procedural motion to advance the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, with every Senate Democrat voting against it and several Republicans joining them, per The Hill, leaving the industry's marquee market-structure bill with no clear path to passage before 2027.

What changes for you: the framework the industry spent three years lobbying for is, for now, not going anywhere. Whoever holds a token in the United States is still operating in the same patchwork that existed last week, with the SEC and CFTC continuing to argue over which agency has authority over which digital asset. No new rulebook, no statutory safe harbor, no settled answer on whether any given token sale is a securities offering.

Brown is back in crypto's crosshairs

Fairshake, the super PAC funded by Coinbase and Ripple Labs, plans to pour $30 million into opposing Sherrod Brown in Ohio's Senate race. Brown chaired the Senate Banking Committee when Democrats were in the majority and was a frequent critic of crypto policy. He lost his 2024 reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno after Fairshake spent about $41 million opposing him.

This time Brown is facing incumbent Republican Jon Husted in a contest The Hill described as tight enough to decide partisan control of the upper chamber. A Brown win could return a crypto-skeptical chair to the Banking Committee.

Money on the table, not yet at the FEC

Fairshake ended August with $108 million on hand, per The Hill, with six weeks left before the 2026 midterm election. The group spent more than $130 million on ads in the 2024 cycle. Its Ohio commitment is the largest disclosed post-CLARITY spending plan, but it had not yet appeared on FEC filings as of Monday.

The same review of FEC records found no post-CLARITY expenditures from Fairshake's two affiliate PACs, Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress, nor from Fellowship, funded by Cantor Fitzgerald and Anchorage Digital, or the Digital Freedom Fund, backed by Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

The lack of filings is not the same as a lack of intent. Mason Lynaugh, executive director of Stand with Crypto, told "will make sure our advocates are ready to cast their ballots accordingly in this and future elections."

Could the CLARITY Act Return?

The CLARITY Act could return for another vote during the lame-duck session, the period between Election Day in November and the swearing-in of the next Congress. Whether that happens will likely depend on whether enough senators switch positions after watching where the industry's money and voter mobilization land in Ohio and the other races taking shape around it. For now, the bill is stuck, and the industry's response is to spend. Holders, in turn, keep waiting on the rulebook the bill would have written.