Musk spent at least US$474m on the midterm election, the most money of any donor in a US election cycle, apart from candidates who have funded their own runs for office. About US$224m was spent on races in Texas, particularly in support of the losing campaign of Ken Paxton for a Senate seat against James Talarico.
Both SpaceX and Tesla are headquartered in Texas. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Musk moved there after declaring that California had become too liberal for his taste.
Both companies are developing extensive infrastructure in Texas, including a joint effort to build a more than US$100b chip manufacturing plant in the state, though those efforts could now face greater scrutiny. Texas is set to have a Democratic governor after the election of Gina Hinojosa, as well as a Democratic attorney general and lieutenant governor.
Musk, 55, did not immediately return a request for comment.
Musk’s midterm spending, while substantial, will have little impact on his overall wealth. As of Tuesday, he was worth US$898b, according to Bloomberg, meaning that his political contributions amounted to a tiny sliver of his net worth.
In relative terms, it was akin to a 55-year-old with the median US net worth of about US$411,000 spending a little more than US$217.
Musk, who avoided posting on X for most of Tuesday night as votes were being counted, returned to his social media platform in the early hours of Wednesday to joke about his political losses and his companies’ prospects.
“Data centers in space [are] looking pretty appealing right now,” he wrote, referring to SpaceX’s goal to put artificial intelligence computing clusters in orbit.
Musk also appeared to be deleting old posts. On Tuesday, he told his more than 240 million followers on X to “vote red today!”
On Wednesday, that post could no longer be found on his account.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Ryan Mac
Photographs by: Demetrius Freeman
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