Forbes Digital Assets contributor Tonya M. Evans reported on June 18 that political spending from the cryptocurrency industry is already shaping the 2026 U.S. primaries, especially in Democratic contests where the winner of the primary is often positioned to win the seat. The article focuses on the Fairshake network, funded by Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz, and on Protect Progress, its Democratic-facing arm. According to Federal Election Commission filings cited in the report, Protect Progress has put more than $4.9 million behind Maryland delegate Adrian Boafo in the crowded Democratic primary for Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District, the seat being vacated by retiring Representative Steny Hoyer.
The image attached to the Forbes article shows Boafo on March 2 greeting Hoyer at a press conference, with the photograph credited to CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images. Forbes frames the spending dispute as a clash between two loud narratives around crypto. One presents the industry as a vehicle for freedom and inclusion; the other presents it as fraud. Evans argues that neither side gives voters enough clarity during an election cycle in which advertising, filings and candidate records are not equally visible to the public.
Joy Reid’s “blackwashing” charge
Journalist Joy Reid, formerly of MSNBC and now host of The Joy Reid Show, used her program this week to criticize the Maryland race and the influx of crypto PAC money. She called the strategy “blackwashing”: an industry channeling money through an organization with a progressive-sounding name to support Black candidates in Black districts, while the ads talk about issues other than the industry behind the political action committee writing the checks.
Forbes says the central part of Reid’s charge is supported by the filings. Boafo’s advertising discusses keeping ICE out of local policing, standing up to Donald Trump and addressing the cost of living. It does not mention cryptocurrency. The funding is disclosed with the Federal Election Commission, but the disclosure is on paper and useful mainly to voters who go looking for it. Most citizens, the article notes, encounter the commercials and campaign materials rather than the underlying filings.
The article also corrects one point in Reid’s description. Reid suggested that Boafo had been a crypto lobbyist. The public record cited by Forbes points instead to his work as a registered in-house lobbyist for Oracle, the cloud and enterprise software company, since 2021. The report says that, as a description of his paid work, the crypto-lobbyist label does not hold. At the time the Forbes piece was written, his Oracle work did not appear on his campaign website.
Boafo’s pro-crypto record and the Oracle issue
The correction does not end the matter, because Forbes says Boafo’s crypto ties are real and come from his own public record. As a state delegate, he sponsored House Bill 470, which created Maryland’s Digital Asset and Blockchain Technology Task Force. Governor Moore signed that bill into law this spring. In a 2025 post promoting the effort, Boafo wrote that blockchain is the future and urged Maryland to become the national leader in blockchain technology and crypto.
In that sense, the issue is not that the ads hide Boafo’s views; the issue is that they hide the funding. Forbes describes Boafo as one of Maryland’s most openly pro-crypto legislators, and says the industry is spending to amplify a candidate who already agrees with its policy direction.
The Oracle disclosures introduce a second layer of controversy. Lobbying filings show that Boafo, as an Oracle lobbyist, represented the company before the Department of Homeland Security during the years when Oracle fought for and, in late 2022, won a cloud-services contract with ICE. At the same time, his campaign ads promise to keep ICE out of local policing. The Lever surfaced the record and also noted that the filings are too vague to tie Boafo personally to that contract. His campaign presents him as a consistent opponent of ICE.
Rushern Baker, the former Prince George’s County executive and one of Boafo’s rivals, has publicly asked how voters can trust Boafo to stand up to Trump’s ICE when he works for a company tied to ICE operations. The Lever also reported that Boafo initially left his Oracle stock off a state ethics form before amending it to include the holding. It further reported that he later revised a 2024 filing to acknowledge Oracle’s business with Maryland’s port authority and health benefit exchange. Boafo has said he handled only federal matters for Oracle and maintained a firewall between his public and private roles.
Crypto spending on both sides of Black Democratic races
Forbes stresses that Boafo is not an isolated case. The same network has spent heavily on a list of pro-crypto Black candidates. In Texas, more than $5 million from Protect Progress helped Christian Menefee, age 38, unseat 78-year-old Representative Al Green in a Houston-area runoff. Forbes describes that contest as the most expensive House primary in the state. The ads emphasized generational change and did not mention cryptocurrency.
In Georgia, roughly $4 million helped Jasmine Clark win an open primary. The candidates differ from race to race, but Forbes identifies the template as consistent: a pro-crypto contender is amplified by industry money, while the advertising focuses on kitchen-table topics and avoids naming the industry behind the spending.
The report also says the dividing line is not race. The same network spent millions to defeat Al Green, who is Black, because he was a staunch crypto critic. Green voted against the GENIUS Act and accused the industry of trying to control Congress. The network has also spent against other Black Democrats it views as hostile, including Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton. Black candidates, in other words, sit on both sides of the money.
Forbes places this spending in the context of heavily Democratic districts, where the primary often decides who goes to Washington. The article cites Pew Research Center data showing that about 83 percent of Black voters identify with or lean Democratic. In seats that are this blue, the winner of the Democratic primary is likely to cast votes in Congress, including votes on digital-asset legislation.
The CLARITY Act raises the stakes
The legislative backdrop is the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a market-structure bill that would divide oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC and set rules for the industry. Forbes reports that the bill cleared the Senate Banking Committee on May 14 in a 15-9 vote and was placed on the Senate Legislative Calendar on June 1, awaiting a floor vote. Only two Democrats joined every Republican to move it out of committee: Arizona’s Ruben Gallego and Maryland’s junior senator, Angela Alsobrooks.
Alsobrooks is an original cosponsor of the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin law signed in July 2025. She also brokered the stablecoin-yield compromise with Republican Thom Tillis that helped move the Clarity Act out of committee. She has endorsed Boafo and appears in his campaign ad alongside Hoyer and Maryland Governor Wes Moore.
Forbes adds that Alsobrooks’ record does not fit a simple reading that she is merely aligned with the crypto industry. She fought consumer-protection language into both bills, cosponsored the End Crypto Corruption Act, and described her committee vote as a vote to keep working in good faith rather than a promise to support the bill on the Senate floor.
Maryland’s other senator, Chris Van Hollen, offers the contrast. He sits on the same committee and voted no on the Clarity Act, just as he did on the GENIUS Act. His objection is not to the technology itself. He proposes stronger rules on illicit finance and disclosure. He also fought for an ethics amendment that would have barred senior government officials from holding crypto business interests while in office. That amendment failed 11-13 and remains part of the unresolved fight heading toward the floor vote.
Outside money becomes the issue in Maryland’s Fifth District
Back in Maryland, the money itself has become a campaign issue. The Fifth District seat is open for the first time in 45 years, and the Democratic field includes roughly two dozen candidates. Over the weekend, three of Boafo’s leading rivals set aside their own competition with each other to protest the roughly $8.8 million in outside money behind him. Forbes identifies the three as Harry Dunn, the January 6 officer endorsed by Pelosi; Quincy Bareebe, who is largely self-funded; and Baker. Most of the outside money, according to the article, comes from the crypto super PAC and an AIPAC-aligned group.
Those rivals called on Hoyer, Moore and Alsobrooks, all of whom have endorsed Boafo, to press him to reject the spending. Boafo’s campaign responded that he has opposed such spending for years and is being misrepresented by his rivals.
Forbes also notes that Boafo’s pro-crypto position makes him an outlier among Maryland Democrats. The industry’s own scorecard, Stand With Crypto, rates Maryland Democrats Anthony Brown and Kweisi Mfume, along with Van Hollen, as strongly against crypto. The article states that the industry is not amplifying a typical Maryland Democrat; it is spending to install an exception.
The Forbes piece closes by separating the technology from the political spending machine. Evans argues that Reid’s “blackwashing” term names a form of capture: progressive-coded money backing chosen candidates in Black districts. But the underlying problem, in the article’s framing, is not crypto technology and not the race of the candidates. It is corporate money in politics, with crypto serving as the most aggressive current example. The 2026 primaries are testing whether voters in heavily Black and Democratic districts can see, before voting, who funds the candidate on screen and what the candidate’s record actually says. Evans is described by Forbes as a crypto law and policy expert, DCG board member, and Forbes and SiriusXM podcast voice.