Neel Aditya
The gloves are off. The crypto industry is finally moving on politicians who have been trying to stifle its growth and vision.
One such battle is between crypto industry-backed Super PAC Fairshake and prominent anti-crypto pol Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif.
Porter is a progressive and is already in a tough primary battle with Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the current favorite; Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; and Republican Steve Garvey.
But California has an open primary system, which will see the top two finishers on March 5 advance to the general election in November. This is where it gets interesting – and Fairshake could be on the verge of knocking Porter out of the race altogether.
A recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California showed Schiff leading the pack, with Porter and Garvey trailing him narrowly.
Schiff, who was the lead prosecutor in President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, leads in the race with 24 points. Porter comes in a close second with 19 points and Garvey is snapping at her heels with 18 points. Way too close.
So if Fairshake succeeds in helping Garvey push his way into the second place, it would be game over for Porter.
The Daily Shib has reached out to Fairshake for a comment.
Fairshake is flush with cash: it recently raised about $85 million from crypto insiders, data from Opensecrets.org show. That includes $5 million last week from the Winklevoss Twins, the founders of the Gemini crypto exchange. Among the other crypto biggies backing Fairshake are as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and ARK Invest.
And Fairshake is pulling no punches. “Despite her claims, Porter has taken campaign cash from the big banks, big pharma, and big oil and her super PAC is spending big to mislead Californians about her record,” it said in a statement.
A recent television ad it took out screams: “We won’t be fooled Katie Porter!”
The left flank of the Democratic party has been largely against crypto, pushing for regulations that could hit at the very idea of freedom the crypto industry projects.
But there are also progressives who recognize the importance and role of crypto in freeing the world from the clutches of centralized actors: “In recent months, a number of progressive commentators have attacked the very idea of decentralization, arguing that it’s a distraction from other political goals. This has also led to progressives making crypto a favorite target and, bizarrely, taking the positions of big banks, which are notoriously monopolistic,” Sheila Warren and Justin Slaughter wrote in an opinion piece in Fortune last year.
The authors, who call themselves progressives, said: “Crypto is an exception to so much technology because it runs on blockchain and no single person or corporation can control it. We value a world where power is dispersed to the people, where no one is so powerful that they can dictate terms to the rest of us when it comes to civil rights and civil liberties. That is a decentralized world.”
Porter is not among the progressives who viscerally hate crypto, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., or strong opponents, like Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont. But her hopes of joining the leagues of Warren and Sanders could remain just dreams if Fairshake succeeds!
