What happened
Democrat James Talarico won the Texas Senate race in the midterms, defeating Republican Ken Paxton by more than 12 points even though Elon Musk directed upward of $200 million into the state to support Republicans, The Verge reported. Ad spending by the two candidates and allied PACs topped $573 million, making it the most expensive Senate contest so far. Talarico becomes the first Democrat to represent Texas in the Senate since 1988.
According to the report, Musk gave more than $168 million to super PACs backing Paxton, while his own America PAC, which he funded with $216 million, spent $34.7 million in Texas. Musk reportedly spent over $445 million nationwide backing Republicans, the largest amount from any donor in American history. Paxton's campaign collected only $22.3 million in direct contributions, compared with $146 million raised by Talarico.
Democrat Gina Hinojosa also unseated Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who received a few million dollars from Musk as well as $300,000 from Anthropic cofounder Tom Brown and money from data center developers. Democrats also won in Ohio and Michigan, where America PAC spent $10.4 million and $9.8 million respectively. Talarico made Paxton's ties to Musk a central campaign theme, accusing the billionaire of trying to purchase the seat.
Context
Texas is Musk's home state and hosts the headquarters of Tesla and SpaceX. Paxton has been the state's attorney general since 2015, apart from a brief period in 2023 when he was impeached. Wired has reported that he launched investigations into organizations critical of Musk; he probed Media Matters after Musk sued the outlet. Hinojosa had sued to obtain some 1,400 pages of correspondence between Musk and Abbott.
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