Elon Musk Pours Millions Into the Election

Elon Musk has given his personal political committee, America PAC, over $76 million during the first two weeks of October to help Republican candidates in the final push before Election Day. This large donation was detailed in a pre-election report the committee filed with the Federal Election Commission. The report also shows that the committee spent nearly $43 million in that same two-week period and has about $47 million in cash left for the remainder of the campaign.

A significant portion of this spending was directed toward the Texas Senate race, which received $15.2 million from the committee in early October. This amount is double what the group had spent on the race all summer long. The spending included $12.4 million for efforts targeting Democratic candidate James Talarico, while $2.8 million was used to support Republican candidate Ken Paxton.

Committee spending against Talarico has been even more significant. Daily filings since the pre-election report show an additional $9.1 million has been spent against him, bringing the total amount spent opposing his candidacy for this election cycle to nearly $28 million. This figure accounts for about 40 percent of everything the committee has spent supporting or opposing any candidate. The committee also increased its online advertising, spending $11.4 million on digital ads over the two-week period, a figure close to what was spent on mail and texting combined.

Musk's personal contributions to Republican groups total more than $445 million for this election cycle, according to an analysis of FEC filings. This makes him the largest known individual donor in the midterms. Of that total, more than $165 million has gone to America PAC since July alone. The committee did not provide a comment for this report.

Musk, whose companies include Tesla and SpaceX, has also been active on the social media platform X regarding the Texas race. On Wednesday, Musk wrote that “there is something deeply wrong with Talarico,” called him “a creep,” and claimed, without evidence, that he “would vote to take away your kids and transition them.” Earlier in the month, Musk shared a false 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 Senate contest is still considered a toss-up. An Emerson College poll of 1,000 likely Texas voters, conducted from October 17 to 19, placed Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 46 percent, a difference within the poll’s 3-point margin of error.

The potential consequences of the election extend beyond Texas. Should Democrats win the House, lawmakers who would lead its committees have indicated they would look into Musk's involvement with 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. Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress would present even greater challenges for him.

On Friday, Silicon Valley Democrats added another issue to the list: restrictions on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service in Ukraine. In a letter to the White House asking for an investigation, Representatives Sam Liccardo, Jimmy Panetta, and Ro Khanna stated that the next Congress “will closely scrutinize federal funding awarded to Mr. Musk’s businesses.”