Musk Pours New Millions Into Final Midterm Push
The billionaire expanded his campaign spending in Texas, making him the largest known individual donor in this year's elections.
By Fatima Zayed ·
Elon Musk injected another 76 million dollars into the midterm race during the first half of October. According to a pre-election report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday evening, his personal political committee, America PAC, moved significant funds in the final weeks before voters head to the polls. This latest injection cements his position as the biggest known individual donor in the current election cycle.
The committee spent nearly 43 million dollars in those two weeks and entered the final stretch with almost 47 million dollars in cash. This financial firepower has been concentrated heavily on the Senate race in Texas. The state received 15.2 million dollars in the reporting period, which is double the amount the PAC spent there during the summer months. Of that total, 12.4 million dollars was allocated to attack Democratic candidate James Talarico, while 2.8 million dollars went toward promoting Republican Ken Paxton.
Daily filings indicate that another 9.1 million dollars has been spent against Talarico since the initial report. This brings the PAC's total spending against him to nearly 28 million dollars for the cycle. That figure represents about 40 percent of everything the group has spent supporting or opposing candidates. The strategy has also shifted toward digital channels, with 11.4 million dollars spent on online ads in the same two weeks. This amount is close to what the PAC spent on mail and texting combined.
Musk has now given more than 445 million dollars to Republican political groups this election cycle, based on an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings. More than 165 million dollars of that total went to America PAC since July. The committee declined to comment on the new figures. Musk, whose companies including Tesla and SpaceX are based in Texas, has also used his online platform to influence the race.
On Wednesday, Musk posted on X that there is something deeply wrong with Talarico. He called the candidate a creep and claimed without evidence that Talarico would vote to take away your kids and transition them. Earlier in the month, Musk amplified a false claim that Talarico had been treated at a mental health facility. Talarico responded the same day by stating, 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. An Emerson College poll of 1,000 likely Texas voters, conducted from October 17 to 19, found Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 46 percent. The result was within the poll's three-point margin of error. The outcome in Texas is significant because it affects the broader balance of power in Congress.
The stakes for Musk extend beyond a single state. If Democrats win the House, lawmakers in line to lead its committees have signaled they will investigate his role in the Department of Government Efficiency. They also plan to look into his companies' federal contracts and what California Democrat Zoe Lofgren 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 with 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.
Source: Wired
