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.
Pretty sure primary sending isn’t very helpful when it’s intended to change election results.<p>What’s helpful is donating to people who you already know are going to win so that they do you favors later on.
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.
They are saying that was a bad strategy and not the usual one. I have no idea to what extent that’s true.
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.
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.<p>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.
On those terms, they also wasted a lot of cash. 90% of it went to candidates who lost (or opposing candidates who won).
I don't understand how a blanket statement like this can apply. In a voting district where one party is heavily favored, such that that party's primary election winner is basically going to win the general election (e.g. New York City), then primary spending seems like the only place to influence the election.
"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"<p>I read that as them having mistakenly sent the cryptos to the "opposing candidate"
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."
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.
Is there a writeup of the objectives of lobbying/spending here? Are specific bills/topics proposed for the upcoming session?
<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cryptocurrency-and-ai-industries-tested-their-influence-in-illinois-it-didnt-go-well" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/cryptocurrency-and-ai-...</a><p>They're concerned about regulation, as always.<p>Note that this election has no impact over the current congress. Senators and Reps won't be seated until January.
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].<p>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.<p>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].<p>Nobody cares about crypto.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illinois-primary-results-00833615" rel="nofollow">https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illino...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead-americans-middle-east-sympathies.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-gaza-harris/" rel="nofollow">https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/dnc-autopsy-gaza-...</a>
I Will never understand why US allows this kind of political intervention.
I don't understand why they'd throw an election so the other pro-Israel side can win.
This is just activist cope. Voters in Illinois CD7, where I live, didn't put Melissa Conyears-Ervin (lavishly supported by AIPAC) into a tight second-place run against La Shawn Ford because Israel bamboozled them. If you look at the map of where the MCE votes came from, it's very unlikely any of them gave a shit about Israel whatsoever. Her votes followed the exact same pattern as they did in 2024, when she gave Danny Davis (the long-term incumbent) a run for his money, and when she wasn't supported by AIPAC at all.<p>In the Illinois 9th, AIPAC supported candidate seemingly at random in an attempt to split the progressive vote and clear a path for Laura Fine. Didn't work there either.<p>It may very well be the case that Israel is disfavored by a strong majority of Illinois Democrats (I'd certainly understand why). What your analysis misses is <i>salience</i>: people care about lots of things they don't vote about. Poll primary voters here; you will find a small group of them that think Israel is the most important issue in the district (they will be almost uniformly white PMC voters and they'll be disproportionately online). Mostly you're going to find voters that (a) hate Trump and (b) are concerned about the economy.<p>It's clearly not the case that "anti-genocide candidates" enjoy a 90% share of the Illinois Democratic primary electorate, because they didn't win.