Discussion

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

daft_pink: 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: 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.

buddhistdude: "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"

jmyeet: 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-illino...[2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...[3]: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-gaza-...

Quinner: 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: 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.

thuridas: I Will never understand why US allows this kind of political intervention.

tptacek: Pesky thing called the First Amendment.

wyre: Citizens United cough

vasco: 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.

arijun: They are saying that was a bad strategy and not the usual one. I have no idea to what extent that’s true.

tootie: AIPAC was promoting the third place finisher. They opposed both Biss and Abugazeleh who finished first and second.

BurningFrog: 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.

tptacek: 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: 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: 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.

bombcar: I've often thought that the "effectiveness of political spending/lobbying" is often promoted by those who receive the political dollars and lobbyists.And since it's a great way to answer the "If your side/candidate/issue was so great, why did they lose?" question without having to deal with any introspection whatsoever.

lagniappe: >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.

PaulHoule: There was a really amusing article in Bloomberg Businessweek a few years ago which pointed out that most of the really big donors just sprayed money at a unicause indiscriminately and that Michael Bloomberg was the only one that showed any sign of investing rationally.I mentioned that to my wife and she of course rolled her eyes because it seemed so self-serving to her. (Last night we were sitting around the kitchen table and talking about how much better The Economist was than Bloomberg Businessweek and how I finally canceled my subscription to the latter when they hired genius financial writer Matt Levine [1] to write a whole issue boosting crypto in a 200% cringe writing style just before the FTX scandal broke)[1] ... sent him an email about how sorry I was for him!

HDThoreaun: Maybe it's a sign that your "pennies on the dollar" theory needs some work?

polothesecond: If donating money is free speech why don’t you try giving some to a group categorized as a terrorist organization

HDThoreaun: Kat Abugazaleh was a carpet bagger with literally 0 experience governing. The fact that she came close to winning is an indictment on our meme obsessed voting population and imo proof that ranked choice is absolutely needed. There were multiple bonafide progressives in the race with local roots and experience in the state house but the progressive movement abandoned them in favor of a candidate who ran their campaign from tiktok with 85% of the fundraising from out of state. Honestly a disgrace.

Henchman21: Citizens United is an abomination. Its the reason we're in dire straits at present. It "legalized" bribery.

itsdesmond: 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.

blitzar: > The people rejecting candidates who were open to taking those bribesThe people voted for candidates who were openly taking bribes from other people.> You don’t think the professional bribe guys know a thing or two about doing bribes?Crypto bros know better and wont hire the professionals

itsdesmond: Man get this South Park-ass analysis out of what could be a productive conversation.

shimman: I understand the frustration but you realize how brazen the US is about bribes right? It's not a bribe unless you say "I'm giving you this money as a bribe." That's the legal standard SCOTUS has declared.

itsdesmond: Yeah, for sure. That’s why I vote for candidates that refuse PAC money from crypto and otherwise. This goof is lazily and without evidence asserting that there exists no good option. I dunno if they wanna just be smug or if they’re actively trying to dissuade participation, but I don’t need it either way.

longislandguido: > The candidates that won were the candidates you'd expect to win given demographics and the recent political history of the region.If the news is to be believed, the online influencer with no elected office experience came within a couple points of the experienced politician that won, so I would disagree with your assessment.https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/lefty-influencer-kat...A 4 point lead over someone with no experience is hardly a clear-cut win and almost margin-of-error territory.

drysine: owe

jmyeet: That's a long way of saying "Kat ran a better campaign".I have criticisms of her campaign, specifically1. She was a carpet-bagger (as you said). She moved in Illinois in 2024 I believe;2. She initially ran in a district she didn't live in. I believe she initially lived in IL-7 but ran in IL-9 and moved there at some point;3. She chose to primary a relatively good candidate, Jan Shakowsky. My working theory is she was trying to fly under AIPAC's radar by primarying a relatively pro-Palestine candidatei; and4. She essentially advocated for going to war with China over Taiwan for literally no reason. Nobody in her district cares about this. You can blame that in part on having a bad foreign policy advisor but the buck stops with the candidate.And despite all of that and millions being spent against her by pro-Israel groups she still got ~30% of the vote and came second.But as for "better candidates", I'm sorry but my advice is "run a better camapign".