WASHINGTON (The Thursday Times) — Elon Musk made a joke of it after spending nearly half a billion dollars to help Republicans in the US midterms and watching them lose both chambers of Congress.
“Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” the world’s richest man wrote on X, adding a shrug emoji.
According to the campaign finance tracker Open Secrets, Musk has become the largest individual contributor in a federal election cycle since unlimited political spending was allowed in 2010. Most of his money went to America PAC, the group he set up in 2024, and to the Senate Leadership Fund, the Republican super PAC.
His biggest single defeat came in Texas, where Tesla, SpaceX and X are now based. The Senate Leadership Fund used $158 million he gave it in September to support Ken Paxton, who lost to Democrat James Talarico, the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas since 1994.
Talarico made a point of it in his victory speech. “In this race, we went up against our own Goliaths,” he said. “The richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world and the entire Washington, DC establishment.”
Democrats had campaigned against the influence of big money in politics. Total spending on this year’s elections was projected to reach nearly $12 billion, the most ever for a midterm.
