WASHINGTON — Races for Rep. Angie Craig’s 2^nd Congressional District seat have all the time been awash in outside spending, with groups supporting or opposing the incumbent spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to swamp the airwaves with TV ads.

But the largest outside spender this time is latest to the sport and represents the cryptocurrency industry, which is attempting to fend off latest federal regulations.

So crypto Super PAC Fairshake and two allied PACs, Defend American Jobs and Protect Progress, have spent greater than $130 million this 12 months supporting its friends in Congress, and those that could be their friends, and attacking lawmakers who want higher regulation of the crypto industry.

Fairshake alone has spent greater than $1 million supporting Craig, although its ads don’t mention crypto in any respect, focusing as a substitute on the Democrat’s hardscrabble upbringing (in Arkansas) and portraying her as an inflation fighter. 

“Angie Craig knows what it takes to make ends meet,” the Fairshake ads say. “Raised by a single mother who worked two jobs, Craig’s mother had to choose from food and health care.”

The large spending by the crypto industry on Craig’s behalf seems counterintuitive at first blush. In spite of everything, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-6^th District, is certainly one of the highest champions of the industry in Congress, has a senior position on the House Financial Services Committee and is a member of the GOP leadership as House Majority Whip.

And Emmer is the largest booster of Craig’s GOP opponent, Joe Teirab, whose campaign didn’t profit from the massive outpouring of political crypto money. Neither Emmer’s campaign nor Teirab’s responded to requests for comment.

However the industry knows what it’s doing.

Craig sits on the Agriculture Committee panel with jurisdiction over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC,) which, together with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), regulates crypto.

Craig was also identified by cryptocurrency advocacy group Stand With Crypto as a lawmaker who “strongly supports crypto” — a rating based on the study of her voting record and a questionnaire she filled out.

In that questionnaire, Craig said she didn’t have any experience buying or selling crypto, but agreed that the industry’s blockchain technology and digital assets would play “a serious role in the subsequent wave of technological innovation globally.”

She also agreed with the statement that “cryptocurrency and the digital asset industry is driving economic growth and supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country” and said she would vote for a bill, heavily promoted by Emmer, called the Financial Innovation and Technology for the twenty first Century Act.

The laws would shift some crypto oversight away from the SEC and toward the CFTC, which some critics see as friendlier to industry.

Walz costs Harris Pennsylvania?

Former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told Bloomberg Television Thursday that his former arch nemesis, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, had a key role in Kamala Harris’ collection of Tim Walz over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her vice-presidential running mate.

McCarthy said that call — echoed by other Republicans and, privately, a couple of Democrats these days — means Harris will lose Pennsylvania and lose the national election to Donald Trump

“If (Trump) picks up Pennsylvania — it’s over,” McCarthy said, because he wouldn’t have to capture other swing states like Arizona or Nevada to achieve the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.

He also said “Kamala, at the tip of the day — if she loses this race — it’s going to be due to her listening to Pelosi when Pelosi pushed her to select Walz, not Shapiro.”

Yet some analysts say Harris could lose Pennsylvania and still win the election if she wins all of the states that now favor her and is capable of win either Georgia or North Carolina.

Still, Harris’ almost certainly path to the White Home is winning the Midwestern “blue wall” states of Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania and one congressional district in Omaha, Nebraska. 

There isn’t a evidence that Shapiro, while popular in his home state, would have done higher than Walz stumping for Harris in Pennsylvania.

However the race is tight there and Pennsylvania likely will probably be the main target of each campaigns within the closing days of the race. Most polls taken within the state show a dead heat.

Walz watch

Hope Walz was back on the campaign trail together with her father this week as Gov. Tim Walz traveled to Wisconsin on Tuesday after spending the weekend in Recent England. He was joined by former President Barack Obama at a rally in Racine on the primary day of early voting within the state.

Walz addressed comments from John Kelly, a former Trump chief of staff, who said recently that Trump had told him that he wished he had generals like Adolf Hitler’s. “As a 24-year veteran of our military, that makes me sick as hell,” Walz said. “The guardrails are gone. Trump is descending into this madness.”

Walz also made a fast trip back to Minnesota to go to a polling place in St. Paul along with his family. 

Walz told a poll employee it was the primary time his 18-year-old son Gus had voted. “He’s pretty enthusiastic about it,” Walz said.

Then it was on to Kentucky, where he raised $2 million at a fundraiser in Louisville.

During that stop in Louisville, Walz said he would mention some “incredibly dangerous reasons that Donald Trump needs to remain out of the White House.”

“But certainly one of the only ones is how refreshing it is going to be just to not see or hear that guy,” he said.

After that Walz headed to the swing state of North Carolina, where polls show Harris had made some recent headway against Trump.

One stop was to Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium to satisfy men’s basketball coach Jon Scheyer. He was overheard saying Cameron “really does have a highschool gym feel to it” when he walked into the world.

On Thursday evening, Walz was scheduled to talk at a rally at Wilmington, North Carolina, where he could be joined by native son James Taylor.

Taylor was expected to perform on the rally, however the Harris campaign couldn’t confirm the musician would sing “Carolina in My Mind.”

In case you missed it:

• Ava Kian traveled to Sleepy Eye for our story on the 1^st congressional district that was represented by Tim Walz for a dozen years but is now out of reach for a Democratic candidate.
• Peter Callaghan took a close look at a state senate race that is just not getting much attention but could determine whether that chamber stays in DFL hands.
• And Winter Keefer wrote about why it’s taking so long — 4 years after the death of George Floyd — to take down the razor wire around Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police station. The station was burned down in the course of the city’s unrest and its dilapidated state provides backdrop for GOP politicians in charge Tim Walz for the unrest.

Your questions and comments

A reader who said his graduate degree was focused on immigration commented on our story in regards to the drift towards the GOP within the largely rural 1^st Congressional District, which borders Iowa.

“When a Republican farmer isn’t focused on getting an important farm bill, but supporting the Trump agenda, which is pretty anti-rural, I actually wonder why people cannot give attention to real issues that affect them,” the reader wrote. “Immigrants are a giant a part of filling rural jobs. Actually most are well respected. Form of like ‘our immigrants are OK,’  but there’s numerous fear of immigrants in big cities – who create no risk for them, excluding those involved in drug trafficking, which is hardly confined to immigrants.”

The story also prompted a comment from a resident of the 1^st District.

“We’d like more construction employees,” the reader wrote. “Construction firms are backed up. This results in an extended waiting period for service. In case you are lucky enough to get service, you might have to pay an additional mileage fee if you happen to live removed from cities like Rochester and Austin…Free trade school or community college could help increase the variety of construction employees.”

Please keep your comments, and any questions, coming. I’ll try my best to reply. Please contact me at aradelat@minnpost.com.