Musk Injects $76 Million Into GOP Campaigns Ahead of Vote
The tech billionaire's personal political action committee poured millions into Texas and digital advertising during the first half of October.
By Noor Haddad ·
Elon Musk transferred more than $76 million to his political committee, America PAC, during the first two weeks of October to support Republican candidates in the final days before the midterms. The funding was disclosed in a pre-election report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday evening. The committee spent close to $43 million over that same period and began the campaign's final leg with nearly $47 million in cash on hand.
Most of the new money targeted the Texas Senate race. The committee directed $15.2 million to the state, which is twice the amount it spent there throughout the summer. Of that total, $12.4 million went toward attacking Democratic candidate James Talarico, while $2.8 million was used to promote Republican Ken Paxton.
Filings submitted since then show an additional $9.1 million spent opposing Talarico. This brings the total spent against him in this election cycle to nearly $28 million, accounting for about 40 percent of everything the committee has spent supporting or opposing candidates. The committee also moved toward online platforms, putting $11.4 million into digital ads during those two weeks, a figure close to what it spent on mail and texting combined.
Musk has contributed more than $445 million to Republican political groups during this election cycle, according to a review of FEC filings, making him the largest known individual donor in the midterms. More than $165 million of that sum has gone to America PAC since July. The committee declined to comment on the report.
Musk has several companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, based in Texas, and has been posting about the race online. On Wednesday, he wrote on X that there is something deeply wrong with Talarico, calling him a creep and claiming, without evidence, that he would vote to take away your kids and transition them. Earlier this month, Musk also amplified a claim that Talarico had been treated at a mental health facility. Talarico responded the same day: 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 October 17 to 19, found Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 46 percent, within the poll's 3-point margin of error.
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.
Source: Wired
