Not even $200 million could help Elon Musk buy Texas

James Talarico, the Democratic Texas senator-elect, not lone managed to flip the province in yesterday’s midterms but prevailed in the most costly Senate ballot to date. More than $573 myriad was spent on promotions between Talarico, his Republican enemy Ken Paxton, and their aligned PACs. And a big chunk of that prosperity came from fair one man: Elon Musk.

Musk reportedly spent additional than $445 myriad supporting Republicans in the midterms, making him not lone by far the biggest donor in the 2026 ballot sequence but additionally in American history. And most of his prosperity was spent in Texas, his residence province and the agency of the two Tesla and SpaceX. Musk funneled additional than $168 myriad to excellent PACs that supported Paxton; Musk’s own America PAC, to which he funneled $216 million, additionally spent $34.7 myriad of those finances in Texas. All told, that’s additional than $200 myriad spent on a sole state.

But Musk’s millions couldn’t buy him an election. Talarico beat Paxton by additional than 12 points, becoming Texas’ archetypal Democratic legislator since 1988. And the governor’s place flipped, too: Democrat Gina Hinojosa ousted Republican incumbent Greg Abbott, another beneficiary of Musk’s largesse. The Democratic imagination of a blue Texas eventually became actuality — and it happened notwithstanding the efforts of the world’s archetypal trillionaire.

More than a blue wave, the midterms were a bloodbath for Republicans, who underperformed nationally equal in the states they won. Democrats’ victories throughout the nation frequently came downward to money. But in Texas, it didn’t happen in the way Musk hoped. Talarico framed the competition as a “top versus bottom” battle between the ultrarich and everyone else. Musk’s donations to Abbott and Paxton may have emphasized America’s prosperity inequality at a period whenever many Americans are struggling to create ends encounter under an financial emergency caused by inflation, tariffs, and the ongoing war against Iran — all the results of guideline choices made by the current administration.

It’s difficult to ideate fair how poorly Paxton would have performed without Musk’s money. Paxton’s run received fair $22.3 myriad in straightforward donations, a paltry sum compared alongside the $146 myriad Talarico raised from voters. Paxton got a much-needed boost from Musk, who ensured that Texans were inundated alongside anti-Talarico ads. Those ads, however, didn’t concentration on the issues that mattered most to voters. In Texas, anti-Talarico ads mostly focused on civilization war issues akin transgender people, a fixation of Musk’s. (Musk is estranged from his oldest daughter, who is transgender, and he has described her as having been “killed” by the “woke intellect virus.”) One Facebook ad that disbursal between $15,000 and $20,000 urged voters to “defeat Talarico and his extreme trans agenda.” According to an inspection of America PAC’s spending by 19th News, the ad was one of dozens of anti-trans ads paid for by Musk.

But Musk’s prosperity was additionally a liability for Paxton, which is perchance why the now-near-trillionaire chose to run from rearward the scenes this period around. Musk endorsed Paxton on X — claiming the “fate of Texas and America is at stake” in the ballot — but against all Musk’s instincts for community spectacle, he didn’t obtain on a surrogate function in the midterms, in Texas or elsewhere. There was no Musk-led rally, no onstage jumping, no chainsaw in sight. Instead, Talarico often emphasized the association between Paxton and Musk, suggesting that to ballot for one man was to advantage the other. “Elon Musk is trying to buy this Senate seat,” he said at a rally in El Paso in delayed October. “In all likelihood, if you’ve seen an assault ad on your TV screen, that was Elon. If you’ve gotten lies in your mailbox, that was Elon. If you’ve received a content communication saying scary things concerning me alongside scary black-and-white photos, that was Elon too.”

Talarico’s comments may have drawn equal additional notice to Musk’s cozy association alongside Paxton, which appears to be mutually beneficial. Paxton, who’s served as Texas attorney broad since 2015 — apart from a concise stint in 2023 whenever he was impeached — has launched multiple investigations into organizations that condemn or antagonize Musk, according to a latest Wired report. Paxton has often followed Musk’s lead. After Musk sued the advancing media location Media Matters, Paxton investigated the publication; whenever Musk submitted an antitrust lawsuit against an promotion federation, a Paxton investigation followed.

“Elon Musk wants our land,” Talarico stated at his El Paso rally. “He wants our water. He wants our tax dollars. He wants his extremely own individual United States senator.”

Beyond trying to buy a senator, Musk additionally tried to part in for a governor. Though most of the prosperity Musk spent in Texas went to Paxton, he additionally threw a few myriad to Abbott, alongside whom he additionally has a near association — so much so that Hinojosa sued to perspective all 1,400 pages of correspondence between the two. And Musk wasn’t the lone tech administrator to assistance Abbott. The Republican, who promised to create Texas the “epicenter” of AI development, additionally received $300,000 from Anthropic cofounder Tom Brown, as fine as finances from multiple data center developers.

Musk seems to awareness that the governmental winds have shifted. Usually a prolific poster, Musk deleted a “Vote red early!” article from Election Day and barely had item to say on X that night apart from a quip concerning putting data centers in space. The another states he threw prosperity at barely fared better. Democrats won in Ohio, anywhere Musk’s America PAC spent $10.4 million, and Michigan, anywhere he spent $9.8 million. The Republican party’s lone genuine triumph was in Florida, and they barely managed to eke out a triumph there.

The amount of prosperity Musk spent on this ballot sequence is the two staggering and unprecedented — and it’s additionally meaningless to him. Musk misplaced fractional a milliard dollars in his unsuccessful bid to buy the midterms, an amount that adds up to small than fractional a percent of his net worth. It’s imaginable that his defeat volition indication that equal the world’s richest man can’t curve the electorate to his will. But it’s fair as apt that he’ll expend equal additional prosperity next time.