Musk Pours $76 Million Into GOP Push, Aiming at Texas Senate Seat

A familiar pattern has emerged in the closing weeks of this year's midterms: Elon Musk has wired more than $76 million into his personal political committee, America PAC, during the first two weeks of October to boost Republicans in the homestretch. The contribution was disclosed in a pre-election report the committee filed with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday evening.

The filing shows America PAC spent close to $43 million over those two weeks and entered the campaign's final stretch with nearly $47 million in cash on hand. Spending was concentrated on the Texas Senate race, which drew $15.2 million from the committee. That figure is double what the group spent on the contest all summer, with $12.4 million directed at attacking Democratic candidate James Talarico and $2.8 million supporting Republican Ken Paxton. Filings released after that report added another $9.1 million in spending against Talarico, bringing the total spent against him this cycle to nearly $28 million, or about 40 percent of all funds America PAC has put behind or against candidates. The committee also shifted toward online ads, spending $11.4 million on digital advertising during the same two-week span, close to what it spent on mail and texting combined.

Across the full election cycle, Musk has given more than $445 million to Republican political groups, according to an analysis of FEC filings, a figure that makes him the largest known individual donor in the midterms. More than $165 million of that total has gone to America PAC since July alone. The committee declined to comment on the matter.

Musk, who has several companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, based in Texas, has also been posting about the race. On Wednesday, he wrote 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, Musk amplified 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 race remains a toss-up. An Emerson College survey 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."

Open questions remain around the committee's remaining cash and whether the final spending push will shift any state's balance, as well as how lawmakers would pursue such an investigation should Democrats gain control of Congress.