Musk Funds GOP With $76 Million Push

Elon Musk personally contributed over $76 million to his political committee, America PAC, during the first two weeks of October. The infusion of cash was detailed in a pre-election report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. The organization is focused on boosting Republican candidates in the final stretch of the midterms.

During that same period, the committee spent close to $43 million and ended the first half of the month with nearly $47 million in cash on hand. A significant portion of these resources was directed toward the race for the Texas Senate seat. Spending there totaled $15.2 million, which is double what the committee spent in the state throughout the summer. The committee allocated $12.4 million to attack Democratic candidate James Talarico, while $2.8 million was used to support Republican Ken Paxton.

Filings submitted after those two weeks indicated an additional $9.1 million was spent against Talarico. This increased the total spent opposing him this cycle to nearly $28 million, representing about 40 percent of everything the committee has spent supporting or opposing candidates. The committee 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. According to an analysis of FEC filings, Musk has given more than $445 million to Republican political groups this election cycle, making him the largest known individual donor in the midterms. More than $165 million of that has gone to America PAC since July alone.

Musk, whose companies include Tesla and SpaceX, has also been posting online about 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 'he would vote to take away your kids and transition them.' Earlier this month, he amplified a claim that Talarico had been treated at a mental health facility. Talarico responded: '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, his companies' federal contracts, and what Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, called an 'astounding' number of conflicts of interest. 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.'