Elon Musk Pours $276 Million into Republican Campaigns to Protect Senate
Majority
The world’s richest person
has quietly become by far the biggest known midterm donor, trying to save Republicans’
Senate majority with some of the largest donations in American political history.
·
Elon
Musk has donated more than $276 million since July 2026 to Republican groups and
political action committees (super PACs) to support the party in the U.S. midterm
elections.
·
He
contributed $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and over $76 million to America
PAC, which is running a nationwide voter-turnout campaign.
·
His
other contributions include $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, $10
million to the Republican Governors Association and $10 million to a super PAC supporting
Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton.
·
Musk’s
America PAC has deployed nearly 3,000 paid canvassers and reportedly knocked on
6.5 million doors to mobilise conservative voters across
key electoral battlegrounds.
·
The
campaign focuses heavily on transgender issues, immigration and portraying Democrats
as socialists to energise Republican supporters.
·
Musk’s
spending gives Republicans a significant financial advantage over Democrats, who
lack a comparable billionaire donor.
·
Despite
renewed ties with President Donald Trump, Musk is taking a less personally visible
role in campaigning, while his political spending signals continued support for
Republicans and potential involvement in the 2028 presidential election.
[ABS News Service/13.10.2026]
Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than $276 million into Republican
groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation
to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.
The staggering amount of money makes Mr. Musk, the richest person
in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Representatives for
Mr. Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The
New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Thursday.
In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, he gave a total
of $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing
the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one
of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s
Democratic rival raised
from all of its donors that quarter.
Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through
a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over $76 million this summer
to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling canvassing program
to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven
Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.
Mr. Musk has already given far more money, about $366 million, to federal committees during the 2025-26 election
cycle than he did during the 2024 election,
when he laid out roughly $290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans
to power. He has given even more in undisclosed donations during both elections,
according to people briefed on the giving.
The latest torrent of spending has helped give the Republican Party
a financial advantage in the midterms, as well-funded outside groups like Mr. Trump’s
powerful super PAC flood the airwaves with advertising in the final weeks. No Democratic
billionaire is spending nearly as much as Mr. Musk, and money remains a central
worry for the party in an otherwise favorable political environment.
The donations also clear up the mystery of how much staying power
Mr. Musk wants to have in American politics.
“In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the
future,” he said in
May 2025.
Mr. Musk, who oversees a vast business empire that has benefited from enormous federal contracts, is famously unpredictable and often jumps from one project to another.
He has been far quieter about his political work since his dramatic blowup with Mr. Trump last year. After months of wielding vast influence inside the White
House and overseeing Mr. Trump’s government cost-cutting project, he raged against the president’s major domestic
policy bill and floated threats to start a third party.
But the two men have warmed back up, appearing together at three
events in the last two weeks and praising each other.
Now Mr. Musk has donated more than a quarter-billion dollars to help
Mr. Trump and Republicans in the midterms. The money signals his commitment to the
right and sets him up as a potential player in the 2028 presidential election, when
his super PAC says it intends to remain active — the first time it has confirmed
such plans.
Beyond Mr. Musk’s donations to his super PAC and the Senate Leadership
Fund, his representatives said that from July through September, he had given smaller
but still substantial amounts to other conservative groups:
·
$20 million to the
Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC for House Republicans
·
$10 million to Lone
Star Liberty PAC, a group supporting Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for Senate
in Texas
·
$10 million to the
Republican Governors Association
·
$2 million to the
Republican Attorneys General Association
“If Democrats take control of Washington and win key gubernatorial
and attorney general races this November, then America risks becoming a socialist,
woke and borderless country,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for America PAC. “These
robust investments have allowed the G.O.P. apparatus to get its message out so Republicans
can have a fighting chance to defy history.”
On voters’ doors across Texas, the campaign literature carries a
stark warning: “Radical Democrat socialists are winning elections all across America.
Could Texas be next?”
The hanging door cards are the work of Mr. Musk’s voter-turnout operation,
which deployed nearly 3,000 paid canvassers last week around the country, according
to America PAC officials.
The group has devoted most of its more than $76 million in midterm
spending so far to this canvassing program, shelling out smaller amounts on advertising,
mail, phone calls and text messages. Much of the messaging targets Democrats, sometimes
in misleading or overheated ways.
America PAC relies on a few voter-canvassing firms that compete aggressively
with one another for work and for staffing, according to people briefed on the operation.
Turnover in the canvassing industry is high. One canvasser who worked
for America PAC told The Times that he was paid between $1.50 and $3.00 for each
door he knocked on across Texas in the heat. America PAC says it has knocked on
about 6.5 million doors across the country so far.
Mr. Musk and his operation, people close to them say, have been particularly
focused on the Texas Senate race. The group has unloaded over a third of its disclosed
spending in that expensive race, more than in any other. It is uncommon to run an
extensive field campaign in large states like Texas, where television ads are more
often used to reach voters.
Mr. Musk, a resident of Austin, has extensive
business interests and property holdings in Texas. Mr. Paxton, the state attorney
general, has investigated Mr. Musk’s opponents, like Media Matters, a liberal group.
Mr. Musk’s $10 million donation to Mr. Paxton’s super PAC came at
a critical time, when the Republican candidate was being badly outspent.
And Mr. Musk’s $158 million in donations to the Senate Leadership
Fund, the most the super PAC has ever received from a single donor in a quarter,
may have made it possible for that group to suddenly spend big for Mr. Paxton after
months of reluctance.
That is because Mr. Musk’s donations preceded the decision in late
August by the super PAC, led by allies of Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the
majority leader, to start what has become a $149 million pro-Paxton ad campaign.
As it did in 2024, Mr. Musk’s operation is focused not on persuading
swing voters, but on registering and turning out voters with conservative beliefs
— especially “low-propensity” ones who are less likely to cast a ballot.
This is a lot harder for Republicans in a midterm election, without
Mr. Trump at the top of the ballot.
To
do it, Mr. Musk’s super PAC is leaning hard into the culture wars, especially transgender
issues. (Mr. Musk’s daughter, who is transgender, has spoken about their clashes
over her identity, and he has suggested that this led to his increased political
engagement.)
At
voters’ doors in Texas, canvassers are told to target Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic
candidate for governor, over her record on transgender issues, according to parts
of a script reviewed by The Times.
Similarly,
the Musk operation is leaving literature on doors that claims that James Talarico,
the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, has a “radical trans agenda.” And America
PAC’s top ad in the state, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, denounces Mr. Talarico over his past comments suggesting
that “God is nonbinary.”
The
Musk group is also targeting other Democratic Senate candidates over transgender
issues, including Josh Turek, the party’s nominee in Iowa. Nationally, one of the
super PAC’s most visible ads on Facebook features a man in makeup and reads: “He
made his plan to vote. Did you? Don’t stay home while crazies elect radicals.” The
group is running ads and sending mail on a broad range of topics, but socialism
is a core theme. The Musk super PAC regularly attacks Democrats as socialist and
ties them to figures like Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
of New York, according to 48 pieces of direct mail shared by Mintt, a mail-tracking
firm.
Online,
it is even running personalized messaging that invokes a voter’s first name. For
example, in a video showing smiling Democrats: “Why are they smiling? Because Christopher
hasn’t made a plan to vote yet.”
Much
of this outreach points voters to an America PAC website where conservatives can
learn about how to register to vote. The super PAC is pushing what it calls an “America
Pass,” a digital card on Apple or Google wallets on voters’ phones that lists their
registration information, along with election dates and deadlines in their home
state.
While
Mr. Musk is spending big again and using some tactics that are similar to those
he deployed two years ago, this is not 2024 anymore.
He
is in a different place politically. While he and Mr. Trump appear to be on good
terms again — “our modern-day Thomas Edison,” the president called him on Thursday
— Mr. Musk is taking a hands-off approach this election and does not appear as personally
passionate.
He
has not brought up the midterm elections or the Trump presidency much in private
conversations with friends, according to people who have spoken to him in recent
months. He is focused on his businesses, these people say, and he and his business
lieutenants have taken a less active role in America PAC’s operations, entrusting
major decisions to Chris Young, his top adviser.
And
on X, a semi-reliable indicator of where the billionaire’s mind is, Mr. Musk has
written just seven direct posts this year about candidates in competitive midterm
races, according to a Times review, a far cry from his relentless calls throughout
2024 to elect Mr. Trump. Five of those posts focused on Mr. Talarico — and one appeared
critical of Senator Susan Collins, a vulnerable Republican in Maine.
Gone,
too, are Mr. Musk’s barnstorming campaign stops, like the ones he did in Pennsylvania
in October 2024 or a Wisconsin judicial election in the spring of 2025. There are
no more sweepstakes where he personally hands an oversize check of $1 million to
some registered voters who sign a petition, a gambit that drew legal challenges.
Mr.
Musk has not evidently grown infatuated with candidates this time around, as he
did with Mr. Trump. The closest he came was a $10 million donation for a long-shot
Republican running for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky — an investment that went poorly.
The
$276 million figure is, of course, just what is publicly known. Mr. Musk has also
made some seven-figure donations to support midterm candidates through groups that
are not required to disclose their donors, according to a person with knowledge
of the matter.