Elon Musk's $76 Million Boost for Republicans

Elon Musk gave more than $76 million to his personal political committee, America PAC, in the first two weeks of October to help Republicans in the midterms. This money allowed the group to spend nearly $43 million in the final stretch of the race, leaving it with nearly $47 million in cash. The Texas Senate race was a major focus, with $15.2 million spent on it, doubling what the PAC spent there all summer. This spending included $12.4 million to attack Democratic candidate James Talarico and $2.8 million to promote Republican Ken Paxton.

The Texas race has been the biggest focus of America PAC’s spending, with nearly $28 million spent against Talarico this cycle, which is about 40 percent of everything the PAC has spent on candidates. The PAC also shifted toward online ads, spending $11.4 million on digital ads in the same two weeks, which is close to what it spent on mail and texting combined. Musk has given more than $445 million to Republican political groups this election cycle, making him the biggest known individual donor in the midterms. More than $165 million of that has gone to America PAC since July alone.

Musk has also been posting online about the Texas race, calling Talarico a creep and claiming, without evidence, that he would vote to take away his kids and transition them. Earlier this month, Musk amplified a false claim that Talarico had been treated at a mental health facility. Talarico shot back the same day, saying that there is something deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal US Senator. The Texas race remains a toss-up, with an Emerson College poll showing Talarico and Paxton tied at 48 percent and 46 percent, respectively.

The stakes for Musk reach well beyond Texas. If Democrats win the House, the lawmakers in line to lead its committees have signaled they will investigate his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his companies’ federal contracts, and what Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, called an “astounding” number of conflicts of interest. Unified Democratic control of Congress would pose even more problems for him. Silicon Valley Democrats added another target on Friday: restrictions on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service in Ukraine. In a letter to the White House demanding an investigation, Representatives Sam Liccardo, Jimmy Panetta, and Ro Khanna vowed that the next Congress “will closely scrutinize federal funding awarded to Mr. Musk’s businesses.”