A deluge of crypto-industry money may have helped achieve a very narrow Arizona congressional primary win this week for Yassamin Ansari, a crypto-cheering Phoenix City Council member who faced a candidate backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

But the race between Democrats Ansari and Raquel Terán, who'd been endorsed by leading crypto critic Warren, has come down to a 67-vote gap almost a week after that state's elections, and Ansari's lead has narrowed each time a new batch was tallied. Wider Maricopa County, which includes the 3rd district, still has an estimated 2,089 ballots to count, according to the secretary of state's office, and the current margin of less than 0.2% in Arizona's 3rd Congressional District is well below the half-percent threshold required for an automatic recount.

Even if Ansari wins the first tally, she'd likely have to await a formal recount to make it official.

Ansari's campaign saw about $1.4 million in crypto political action committee (PAC) spending that either supported her or opposed Terán, according to a PAC spokesman. Ansari, who had signed a recent letter to the Democratic National Committee in which lawmakers and candidates requested the party platform include a pro-crypto stance, has so far claimed about 44.6% of the vote against Terán's 44.5% in a district that would tend to favor a Democrat in November's general elections.

The Fairshake super PAC and its affiliates generally purchase ads that support industry-favoring candidates without being directly approved by those candidates, and Fairshake has quickly become one of the country's largest PACs. This approach to "independent expenditures" allows the crypto sector and other industries to devote unlimited money to political contests under U.S. campaign-finance laws. In Ansari's case, the spending amounted to about $74 for each of the votes in her column.

Fairshake spokesman Josh Vlasto declined to comment on the Arizona race, because the result isn't yet official.

Ansari's own campaign netted a comparative $1.9 million in direct donations, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures, suggesting that Fairshake's similar spending level may have had a significant impact on the race. Whether it did or not, the candidate's opponent lashed out at Ansari for taking outside money from crypto interests. That support included ads from a PAC affiliated with Fairshake and also direct donations from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Though some polling conducted as recently as April showed Terán with an advantage, the close race favors Ansari at this point.

This is not the first time crypto support has been raised as a contentious campaign issue. Such accusations came up, too, in Shomari Figures' similar win in Alabama and in the Senate primary defeat for Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.). But voters haven't apparently been moved by worries about crypto-sector influence.

Fairshake PAC campaign wins if Ansari wins in Arizona

The industry took two losses in Arizona, too, for candidates Fairshake's affiliate PACs supported. The PAC had backed Andrei Cherny in the Arizona 1st District Democratic primary, but he placed second in a crowded field. And it spent almost $600,000 on Republican Blake Masters in the 8th Congressional District contest, where the former Arizona Senate candidate similarly came in second among several candidates.

Digital assets interests have already seen more than 20 favored candidates win primary elections this year, potentially including Ansari. While crypto legislation hasn't yet cleared the current Congress, next year's session will include a larger number of potentially supportive members in the House of Representatives and Senate.

U.S. congressional primaries are in their final days, with a few states finishing this week, meaning the towering crypto industry PAC will soon shift to the general election. Vlasto declined to comment on what Fairshake will do on the road to November.

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Jesse Hamilton

Jesse Hamilton is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor on the Global Policy and Regulation team, based in Washington, D.C. Before joining CoinDesk in 2022, he worked for more than a decade covering Wall Street regulation at Bloomberg News and Businessweek, writing about the early whisperings among federal agencies trying to decide what to do about crypto. He’s won several national honors in his reporting career, including from his time as a war correspondent in Iraq and as a police reporter for newspapers. Jesse is a graduate of Western Washington University, where he studied journalism and history. He has no crypto holdings.