Elon Musk’s Midterm Spending Surpasses All Expectations

In the final stretch of the midterms, Elon Musk has poured more than $76 million into his personal political committee, America PAC, to support Republicans, according to a pre-election report filed with the Federal Election Commission. This spending has been particularly focused on the Texas Senate race, where Musk’s group spent nearly $15.2 million in the first two weeks of October alone, more than doubling its spending on the race in the summer. This spending included $12.4 million to attack Democratic candidate James Talarico and $2.8 million to promote Republican Ken Paxton.

Since then, the PAC has spent an additional $9.1 million against Talarico, bringing its total spending on him to nearly $28 million, or 40 percent of everything it has spent on supporting or opposing candidates. The PAC also shifted toward digital ads, spending $11.4 million on them in the same two weeks, close to what it spent on mail and texting combined.

Musk has been the biggest known individual donor in the midterms, having given more than $445 million to Republican political groups this election cycle, according to WIRED’s analysis of FEC filings. More than $165 million of that has gone to America PAC since July alone.

The Texas race remains a toss-up, with an Emerson College poll finding Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 46 percent, within the poll’s 3-point margin of error. The stakes for Musk go beyond Texas, as a Democratic win in the House would likely lead to investigations into his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his companies’ federal contracts, and the conflicts of interest that have been highlighted by Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat. Silicon Valley Democrats have also added another target on Friday: restrictions on SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service in Ukraine, as they vow to closely scrutinize federal funding awarded to Musk’s businesses in the next Congress.