Musk Pumps Millions Into GOP Campaigns Ahead of Election
America PAC received a massive personal donation from the billionaire to fuel Republican efforts in the closing days of the midterm campaign.
By Mei Lin ·
Elon Musk recently transferred more than $76 million to America PAC, the political committee he personally finances, to help Republican candidates in the final push toward the upcoming election. The transfer was disclosed in a pre-election report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday evening.
The committee allocated nearly $43 million during the first two weeks of October, while maintaining nearly $47 million in cash reserves for the campaign's final phase. Digital advertising accounted for $11.4 million of that spending during the same period, a figure close to what the committee spent on mail and text messaging combined.
Musk, whose companies Tesla and SpaceX are based in Texas, has been active online regarding the race. On Wednesday, he posted on X that "there is something deeply wrong with Talarico," then called him "a creep" and claimed, without evidence, that "would vote to take away your kids and transition them." Earlier this month, Musk amplified a false claim that Talarico had been treated at a mental health facility. Talarico responded that 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 dominated the new spending, drawing $15.2 million, which is double the amount the PAC spent there all summer. That funding included $12.4 million to attack Democratic candidate James Talarico and $2.8 million to promote Republican Ken Paxton. Daily filings since then show $9.1 million more against Talarico, bringing the PAC's spending against him this cycle to nearly $28 million, about 40 percent of everything it has spent supporting or opposing candidates.
Across the entire election cycle, Musk has contributed more than $445 million to Republican political groups, according to an analysis of FEC filings, making him the largest known individual donor. More than $165 million of that has gone to America PAC since July alone.
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 Sam Khanna vowed that the next Congress "will closely scrutinize federal funding awarded to Mr. Musk's businesses."
Source: Wired
