Elon Musk spent close to half a billion dollars on the US midterm elections and has little to show for it, Reuters reported in a dispatch carried by the Daily Mirror.
Just three of the 43 Republican House candidates Musk backed won on Tuesday night, against 33 who lost. Seven races remained uncalled late on Wednesday, with Democrats leading in the tallies. Of the seven Senate Republicans he supported, six lost and one — Alaska, where Democrat Mary Peltola was narrowly ahead with 77 percent of votes counted — was still undecided.
Texas delivered nothing
In Texas, where SpaceX and Tesla are headquartered and where Musk plans a chipmaking venture, he spent almost $230 million on the Senate contest, $5 million on the governor’s race and $500,000 on the lieutenant governor vote, and came away empty-handed.
Political advertising tracker AdImpact said the Texas Senate race was the most expensive non-presidential contest in US history, at roughly $573.2 million in total spending. Senator-elect James Talarico, the Democrat whom Musk targeted with $153.5 million worth of attack advertising, used his acceptance speech in Austin to say: “We’ve just sent a message to every millionaire mega donor, to every trillionaire mega donor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system. In this state, in this country, power belongs to the people.”
That $153.5 million figure clarifies an earlier discrepancy in reporting on the race. LankaNewz previously reported CNN’s figure of more than $150 million spent behind Republican candidate Ken Paxton, alongside Hiru’s lower figure of more than $45 million. The Reuters account describes the same spending from the opposite side — as advertising against Talarico.
Texas was not the only state involved. Hiru News, citing the BBC, reported that Musk also spent millions of dollars backing Republican candidates in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and that his political outlays continued right up to the Monday before polling day, according to election finance records. The BBC put his total at close to $450 million, or about £334 million — described as the largest sum ever spent by one individual on candidates in a US election.
Market and political consequences
Shares in SpaceX and Tesla fell 3.9 percent and 3.3 percent respectively on Wednesday, on investor concern that a Democratic-controlled Congress would tighten scrutiny of Musk’s Starlink satellite service and his AI data centre projects.
Musk spent $445 million on federal races alone, according to the non-partisan watchdog OpenSecrets, with further sums routed through dark money non-profits and state and local races that disclose less. His America PAC and his attorney Alex Spiro did not respond to requests for comment.
“A lot of Democrats see him as the Mr. Money Bags for their Republican opponents and that’s certainly going to color how they’re going to treat him personally,” said David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College. “He’s particularly at risk because he’s been part of the Trump administration and his companies have direct government involvement.”
