Musk Pours $76 Million Into America PAC As Texas Senate Race Narrows

More than $76 million in fresh cash landed in the bank account of America PAC, Elon Musk’s personal political committee, during the first two weeks of October. According to a pre-election report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday evening, the infusion was designed to push Republican candidates in the final stretch of the midterm elections.

The committee spent nearly $43 million during that two-week window and entered the final leg of the campaign holding about $47 million in cash. The Texas Senate race absorbed the largest share of that new spending. America PAC directed $15.2 million to the contest, a figure that is double what the group spent in that state during the entire summer. Of that total, $12.4 million was used to attack Democratic candidate James Talarico, while $2.8 million went toward promoting Republican Ken Paxton.

Daily filings released after the initial report show an additional $9.1 million spent against Talarico. This brings the total spending against the Democrat this cycle to nearly $28 million. That amount represents about 40 percent of everything America PAC has spent supporting or opposing candidates. The group also shifted its strategy toward digital platforms, spending $11.4 million on online ads in the same two weeks. This digital expenditure is close to the amount spent on mail and texting combined.

Musk has given more than $445 million to Republican political groups in this election cycle, according to an analysis of FEC filings by WIRED. This makes him the largest known individual donor in the midterms. Since July alone, more than $165 million has gone to America PAC. The committee declined to comment on the new spending figures.

Musk, who has several companies including Tesla and SpaceX based in Texas, has also been vocal about the race on social media. On Wednesday, he posted on X that there is something deeply wrong with Talarico. He then 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, 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 difference is within the poll’s three-point margin of error. The stakes for Musk reach well beyond the Texas Senate. 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, his companies’ federal contracts, and a large number of conflicts of interest.

Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, described the number of conflicts as astounding. Unified Democratic control of Congress would pose even more problems for the billionaire. Silicon Valley Democrats added another target on Friday by demanding restrictions on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service in Ukraine. In a letter to the White House, Representatives Sam Liccardo, Jimmy Panetta, and Ro Khanna vowed that the next Congress will closely scrutinize federal funding awarded to Musk’s businesses.