Elon Musk builds rockets on the Texas coast, cars outside Austin, and tunnels near Bastrop. This fall, he’s also bankrolling the most expensive Senate race in US history.
The world’s richest man has injected at least $168 million into the fight to elect Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton to the US Senate, making it possible he could “singlehandedly” alter the course of the midterms. He also gave $5 million to Gov. Greg Abbott’s reelection campaign last month, according to a new state filing. Together, that’s more than a third of the roughly $446 million Musk has given to Republican causes nationwide this cycle.
The money comes with a lot riding on it. Musk’s companies have collected tens of millions of dollars in state grants and more than a billion in promised tax breaks under Abbott, and the governor’s appointees were preparing to discuss selling a state park site next to SpaceX’s launch site to Musk’s company until reporters started asking about it.
On Election Day, Texans will decide whether to keep the leaders who made those deals in office or replace them with Democrats who have made Musk a central target of their campaigns.
Elon Musk’s record-breaking spend
With Musk’s help, spending in the Senate race in Texas has passed $544 million, overtaking Ohio’s 2024 Senate contest as the most expensive in US history. Most of Musk’s money flowed through the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, which passed $158 million to Texas PAC, a group backing Paxton.
Musk’s total this cycle already rivals the biggest donors in modern politics. It’s more than billionaire George Soros has given in total disclosed donations since 2004 and approaches the more than $500 million Sheldon and Miriam Adelson gave across five election cycles. Musk was also the largest donor of the 2024 election, when he spent more than a quarter billion dollars to support Donald Trump and other Republicans. In May 2025, he told an audience at the Qatar Economic Forum he planned to pull back “a lot” on future spending in politics. “I think I’ve done enough,” he said.
Elon Musk’s Texas
Texas is where Musk’s political spending and his business empire overlap the most. Tesla and X are headquartered in the state. SpaceX builds and launches its Starship rockets at Starbase, near Brownsville, which became an incorporated city last year. The Boring Company is based in Texas, and Musk is developing a semiconductor and AI computing facility, known as Terafab, in Grimes County despite widespread community opposition.
The Senate seat matters to those businesses because of what Congress controls: oversight, regulations, and federal contracts that affect SpaceX, Tesla, and Musk’s other companies. The governor’s office matters because of what the state controls, and Abbott has been generous to Musk’s many entities.
SpaceX has received more than $54 million in state grants, and Musk’s Terafab project is in line for $1.7 billion in school and property tax breaks, according to a lawsuit filed by Abbott’s Democratic challenger, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa. In 2025, the Legislature passed and Abbott signed House Bill 5246, which gave Starbase partial authority to close nearby public beaches for launches.
A Texas state park for sale?
This month, Texas Monthly reported that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, whose members are appointed by Abbott, planned to discuss selling Boca Chica State Park during a closed-door session on Nov. 5, two days after the election. Two sources told the magazine SpaceX was the prospective buyer of the 1,300-acre beachfront park, which surrounds much of Starbase.
After the report, a department spokesperson said the commission was not considering the sale at its November meeting. Abbott said he didn’t know the details, adding, “What I know is that that’s not coming up for a vote anytime soon,” the Texas Tribune reported. He declined to say whether he supports a sale when asked by the Houston Chronicle.
The Abbott-Musk emails
Hinojosa has tried to get eyes on Abbott and Musk’s back-and-forth. On Oct. 19, she sued the governor in Travis County District Court for access to his office’s communications with Musk and his companies. The records had already been gathered in response to a 2025 public information request from The Texas Newsroom, but Abbott’s office withheld much of them, arguing some were “intimate and embarrassing.”
Hinojosa’s lawsuit says Abbott’s office reviewed 1,374 pages of records and redacted or blacked out all but about 200. It also says Musk once asked Abbott whether he would “have his back,” and that Abbott responded, “I said 100%.” The next day, according to the filing, Musk filed paperwork to reincorporate SpaceX in Texas.
On Tuesday, a judge ordered Abbott to stop blocking Hinojosa from seeing the records. As a lawmaker, Hinojosa can review confidential records under state law but can’t make them public, and she has said she isn’t seeking to.
‘Texas is not for sale’
In the Senate race, Democrat James Talarico has made Musk the centerpiece of his closing argument.
“Elon Musk wants our land. He wants our water. He wants our tax dollars. He wants his very own personal United States senator. He is trying to buy Texas,” Talarico has said in rallies across the state, and to Courier Texas. “On November 3, we are going to deliver a crystal clear message to the world’s first trillionaire: Texas is not for sale.”
He has described the money as an attempt to install Paxton in the Senate and “stop this movement that we’re building in Texas.” Talarico’s campaign has raised more than $146 million, largely from small donors, compared with about $22 million for Paxton.
When Musk posted on X last week that “there is something deeply wrong with Talarico,” the Democrat replied, “There is something deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal US Senator.” Paxton responded to Musk’s post with one word: “Indeed.” On a Nov. 2025 appearance of Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee’s Swimming with Sharks podcast, Paxton admitted flatly he could not run a race in Texas without the outside money that pouring in from Super PACs.
The final tally
The numbers are still climbing. Super PACs and campaigns must file their next federal reports, covering activity through Nov. 23, by Dec. 3, according to the FEC. Until then, voters won’t know how much more Musk spent in the campaign’s final weeks.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
