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US Midterms 2026
5NOV

Fellowship PAC: $11m filed, $89m missing

4 min read
00:50UTC

Fellowship PAC filed its Q1 2026 report with the FEC on 15 April disclosing $11 million against a claimed $100 million war chest, with $10 million from Cantor Fitzgerald and ad buys routed through a firm founded by Tether's US chief executive.

PoliticsDeveloping
Key takeaway

A crypto PAC chaired by Tether's lobbyist is funding the senators who will write Tether's regulatory framework.

Fellowship PAC filed its Q1 2026 report with the Federal Election Commission on 15 April 2026, disclosing $11 million in receipts against a publicly claimed $100 million war chest⁠1. Cantor Fitzgerald, the US investment bank that acts as custodian of the dollar reserves backing Tether, gave $10 million in January. Anchorage Digital, a federally chartered crypto bank, gave $1 million. The remaining $89 million of the public claim remains unsupported by federal records.

The donor identities matter more than the gap. Tether is the world's largest stablecoin issuer, running USDT pegged to the US dollar; its dollar reserves sit with Cantor Fitzgerald. Fellowship PAC's treasurer Mitchell Nobel is Cantor's director of digital asset strategy. Its chair Jesse Spiro is Tether's head of government affairs. Bloomberg and CoinDesk reported that Fellowship's ad buys were routed through a firm founded by Tether's US chief executive, a connection the filing does not explain⁠2. The PAC has already spent $850,000 on Kentucky Senate candidate Nate Morris, $350,000 on Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts, and $300,000 in the Georgia 14th runoff closed on 7 April.

The structure closes a loop around the CLARITY Act (Digital Asset Market Structure bill), the legislation that would establish the US regulatory framework for stablecoins. The bank that custodies Tether's reserves funds the PAC chaired by Tether's government-affairs head, and the PAC spends on senators who will vote on the bill that writes the rulebook for Tether's business. The CLARITY Act markup remains stalled into late April, which means the senators whose campaigns Fellowship is funding have not yet delivered the regulatory outcome. The broader crypto super-PAC layer is already deployed: Fairshake holds $171 million cash against end-2025 claims of $193 million and raised only $1.2 million in January and February. Fellowship is building a second channel into the same campaign window.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Tether is the world's largest 'stablecoin', a digital currency designed to always be worth exactly $1. It works because Tether keeps real US dollars in reserve. Those reserves are held by a US bank called Cantor Fitzgerald. A US political spending group called Fellowship PAC says it has raised $100 million to spend on the 2026 elections. When it filed its first financial disclosure with the government in April, only $11 million appeared, $10 million of which came from Cantor Fitzgerald. The remaining $89 million is unaccounted for in federal records. The senators this PAC is funding sit on committees that are deciding whether to pass a new law regulating stablecoins. If that law passes in a form friendly to Tether, Tether's business becomes more secure, and so does Cantor Fitzgerald's lucrative role holding its reserves. The concern is that money is flowing from the entities that benefit from legislation to the politicians who vote on it.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The structural root cause is the CLARITY Act's stablecoin framework: if enacted, it would create a federal regulatory regime under which Tether, currently an offshore entity without US federal registration, could seek a US charter or continue operating in the US market under defined rules. Cantor Fitzgerald, as Tether's reserve custodian, benefits from Tether's continued scale and from any regulatory certainty that reduces the risk of Tether being excluded from US markets.

The $89 million gap in the FEC filing has a specific structural explanation: the most plausible mechanism is that the $100 million claim reflects commitments from donors who have not yet transferred funds, a common gap between announcement and actual receipts in crypto industry fundraising, where liquidity timing (stablecoin redemptions, token sales) differs from traditional cash donations.

What could happen next?
  • Risk

    If the $89 million gap reflects pledges that do not convert to actual donations, Fellowship PAC's operational capacity for the 2026 cycle is $11 million, less than 0.5% of the Republican super-PAC ecosystem, making its influence projection largely notional.

    Short term · 0.71
  • Consequence

    The Cantor-Tether-fellowship circuit, now documented in FEC filings, provides a ready-made legal brief for any Democratic senator on the Banking Committee seeking to add conflict-of-interest provisions to the CLARITY Act markup.

    Short term · 0.8
  • Precedent

    The PAC structure demonstrates that crypto industry campaign finance has moved from diversified bundling (Fairshake's model) to targeted single-outcome funding, a concentration pattern that FEC disclosure rules will expose in subsequent quarterly filings.

    Medium term · 0.75
First Reported In

Update #3 · Tariff shock reads in GDP. Senate map moves.

FEC· 16 Apr 2026
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Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.