AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Elon Musk spent at least $445 million in a gambit to help Republicans keep control of Congress, an amount roughly equivalent to someone on a $100,000 annual salary saving every penny for 4,400 years.
To the world's first trillionaire, it's a pittance, but the billions of dollars' worth of business his companies do with the federal government is not. And on Tuesday night, a Republican Party that had embraced Musk lost again and again, ceding control of Congress to a Democratic Party leery of the world's richest person and keen to put his companies and his work at the Department of Government Efficiency under a microscope.
Nobody may have suffered bigger losses Tuesday than President Donald Trump. But few others had more on the line than Musk, who gambled big and came up holding the midterm’s worst return on investment. Democrats in Congress were already queuing to get their shot at Musk, with possible subpoenas and investigations.
As the bloodiest election for Republicans in recent history wore on, Musk joked on X, the social media site he owns. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time,” he wrote with a shrug emoji.
Musk now faces new threats to his bottom line in places including Texas, where he has based himself and several of his companies. Musk spent at least $5 million to try to reelect Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who lost. Democrats also secured control of the Texas House and the U.S. Senate, partly by beating Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who effectively benefited from $158 million of Musk's spending but lost his Senate race against Democrat James Talarico.
It was the first statewide win for Democrats in Texas in more than 30 years, and the candidates won in part by hammering Musk, the tax breaks and grants his companies receive, and his relationships with elected Republicans.
“This era of open corruption is going to come to an end,” said Rep. Gene Wu, chairman of the state legislature's newly empowered Democratic Caucus.
Musk did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Slightly more than half of Texas voters said they had an unfavorable opinion of Musk, according to The AP Voter Poll of more than 5,000 voters in the state. While Musk is overwhelmingly viewed positively by MAGA Republicans, those numbers dip for non-MAGA GOP voters and plummet for independent and Democratic voters.
Those were the voters who Talarico and Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who beat Abbott in the governor's race, were targeting. The two often framed politics not through partisanship but as billionaires versus everyday Texans, and Musk's emergence as a major Republican benefactor played into that message.
“Paxton is funded by one dude. Elon Musk wants our land. He wants our water. He wants our tax dollars. He wants his very own personal United States senator,” Talarico told a crowd in his final rally of the election, just after Hinojosa gave a similar excoriation on the same Austin stage.
“We know that Elon Musk got a $1.7 billion property tax break here in Texas, property taxes that the rest of us have to pay full price on," Hinojosa said.
Even as Musk's money helped blanket Texas in negative ads largely against Talarico, the Democrats' message was aimed at the heart of an electorate whose median household income of $85,000 a year is under a pressure test as the prices of gas, groceries, rents and mortgages keep climbing.
Outgoing Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said there was a point where the sheer amount of Musk’s donations became unhelpful to the GOP’s effort.
“You’re reaching the upper bound of the benefit of any of these dollars,” he said in an interview. “People are so turned off by all of the ads, and all you’re doing is running the same ad every single time.”
Musk’s two publicly traded companies, Tesla and SpaceX, both saw prices for their shares drop considerably on Wednesday even as the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index climbed.
Tesla shares declined Wednesday afternoon and wiped out about $40 billion from the electric carmaker’s market capitalization, standing at $1.54 trillion. SpaceX also lost about $40 billion from its market value, now at $1.83 trillion.
Musk lost about $45 billion of his net worth on Wednesday, which stood at $865.6 billion, according to Forbes, though it could rebound.
Investors are signaling some jitters about the impact of the election on Musk’s businesses. Worries that he may face congressional investigations “contributed to the early plunge for his benchmark firms," said Joe Mazzola, head trading and derivatives strategist at Charles Schwab.
Musk’s genius is also his danger, said Michael Morris, a professor of leadership at Columbia Business School.
“I can understand that the same strategic mind that makes him so good at some of the business ventures and the hedging, it makes him think that he can also take control of politics, but it’s a different animal,” he said.
"He obviously has way more money than he will ever need, and his companies are doing well,” Morris continued. “I do think it’s kind of a game to him.”
Democrats have not forgotten Musk's time in Washington last year heading DOGE, which blitzed through agencies culling federal workers, and a recent fiasco in which SpaceX internet service in Ukraine, Starlink, was throttled amid the war with Russia.
“Elon Musk waved a chain saw on stage and laughed while he fired public servants and gutted the services Americans rely on,” wrote Rep. James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democrat, in an X post just before the election. “He must answer for it under oath.”
Back home in Texas, with an incoming Democratic governor, Musk's dealings with the state, including tax breaks, could face similar scrutiny.
In August, Musk's companies received a $30 million grant through a state program to build a semiconductor plant that is estimated to create 3,000 jobs, one of several cash infusions he's received through state programs. And he's successfully pushed the state legislature to pass laws favorable to his businesses.
Musk has also railed against what he's called the “woke mind virus,” which appears to be a partisan motivation for him, and shot off a slew of posts on X leading up to the election against Talarico, almost entirely for past stances the Democrat has taken on transgender rights and other progressive causes. That was Paxton's central attack against Talarico, too, though it fell far short.
“You know you couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes anymore with these culture wars, and they are frustrated with the costs," said Rep. Christina Morales, a state Democrat from Houston now in the majority in the state's House.
“We’re not saying you don’t belong here," she said, but “Texans can’t be bought.” ___
Ortutay reported from Oakland, Calif.
