Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has reclaimed his title as the single biggest known political donor at the federal level, dropping more than $280 million over the summer to boost Republican candidates in this year’s midterm elections.
And his biggest mission so far: to boost Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in what’s become one of the most expensive contests this year, the Texas Senate race.
In September, the billionaire tech executive transferred a whopping $158 million into the GOP leadership-linked super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, in two installments. The first one totaled $75 million on Sept. 9, and then $85 million on Sept. 23, according to the group’s latest filing to the Federal Election Commission.
And a day after each of those contributions, SLF transferred the exact same amount of money to a pro-Ken Paxton super PAC called Texas PAC, their latest disclosures show.
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Democrat James Talarico currently has a 3-point lead over Paxton, according to MS NOW’s polling data partner FiftyPlusOne, meaning this race is still a toss-up.
Musk’s eye-popping donations to SLF reportedly came on the heels of conversations among SLF and Musk’s political advisers about matching contributions to boost pro-Paxton efforts in the final stretch of the election. Earlier in August, Musk’s trust and SLF had donated $10 million and $5 million, respectively, to Lone Star Liberty PAC, another pro-Paxton super PAC. That’s according to the super PAC’s latest disclosure. The infusion of cash from Musk and SLF has allowed both Texas PAC and Lone Star Liberty PAC to dominate the Texas airwaves in the past month. In particular, Texas PAC has quickly become the top spender in what was an already expensive race.
Texas PAC has since burned through at least $132 million of the newly raised money on ads, postage and other efforts in support of Paxton and against his Democratic opponent, Talarico, according to FEC filings, with ad-tracking data showing an additional tens of millions of dollars’ worth of reserved airtime in the coming weeks.
Notably, during the long and contentious Texas Senate GOP primary, SLF had publicly campaigned against Paxton in an effort to protect incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, only for the six-term senator to lose to Paxton after President Donald Trump’s last-minute endorsement of the state’s embattled attorney general.
But SLF quickly pivoted in support of Paxton once he was nominated. Now the $158 million from Musk makes up well over half of SLF’s total fundraising in the third quarter of this year, though the money was immediately rerouted to the pro-Paxton super PAC. Still, SLF boasted a $155 million war chest entering October.
In all, the Texas Senate race has already drawn in more than $500 million just in ad spending on both sides of the aisle, according to data firm AdImpact.
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Soorin Kim is a White House producer with MS NOW.