Musk's $76M Flood Overwhelms Texas Senate Race in Final Stretch

Voters in Texas and other key battlegrounds face a wave of new political advertising as Elon Musk’s America PAC deployed $76 million in the first two weeks of October. The Federal Election Commission filing submitted on Thursday evening marks the largest single infusion of funds into the midterm campaign to date. The money is intended to support Republican candidates during the final stretch of the election.

The PAC spent nearly $43 million in that two-week period and holds almost $47 million in cash for the remainder of the campaign. The Texas Senate race absorbed the majority of the new outlay. America PAC directed $15.2 million to the contest, double the amount spent in that state during the summer. Of that total, $12.4 million funded attacks on Democratic candidate James Talarico, while $2.8 million promoted Republican incumbent Ken Paxton.

Daily filings show an additional $9.1 million targeted at Talarico since the initial report. This brings the committee’s total spending against the Democrat to nearly $28 million, approximately 40 percent of all cycle spending. The group also increased its digital presence, spending $11.4 million on online ads in the two-week window, a figure nearly equal to its combined expenditure on mail and text messaging.

According to an analysis of FEC records, Musk has provided more than $445 million to Republican political groups this cycle. He is now the largest known individual donor in the midterms, with over $165 million going to America PAC since July. The committee declined to comment on the filings.

Musk has also engaged in the race through social media. On Wednesday, he posted on X that Talarico is a creep and claimed the senator-elect would vote to take away children. He previously amplified a false claim that Talarico had received mental health treatment. Talarico responded by stating that the system is deeply wrong when one trillionaire buys a senator.

An Emerson College poll of 1,000 likely Texas voters conducted October 17 to 19 shows the race remains close. Talarico leads by two points at 48 percent, with Paxton at 46 percent, a margin within the poll’s three-point error range.

The outcome in Texas carries implications for congressional oversight of Musk’s companies. If Democrats secure the House, committee chairs have indicated they will investigate Musk’s role in the Department of Government Efficiency and federal contracts. Representatives Sam Liccardo, Jimmy Panetta, and Ro Khanna have also called for scrutiny of SpaceX’s Starshield service in Ukraine.