Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, poured millions of dollars into Republican races in Texas, where he lives and where one of his primary companies, SpaceX, is headquartered. That effort largely backfired for him.
In total, Musk is reported to have spent around $180 million in Texas races, according to the New York Times. In September, Musk donated $5 million directly to Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign, according to state finance records. He also contributed $10 million to a PAC supporting Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign, federal records show. Both Abbott and Paxton lost their respective races to Democrats.
“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk wrote in a post on X, which he also owns, early Wednesday morning. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” he added minutes later.
SpaceX stocks fell by 5% as of Wednesday afternoon. Cameron County, where SpaceX is headquartered, went for Senate-elect James Talarico over Paxton by nearly 40 points.
“Is Texas a state that is by and for the people of Texas, or is this the billionaires’ world, and we just live here?” Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who ousted Abbott, said during her victory speech Tuesday night. “Tonight, Texas, we answered. And we did not whisper. We answered loud enough for every billionaire, every lobbyist, and every corrupt politician in Austin to hear: Texas belongs to us.”
Musk has grown intertwined with the Texas political landscape, particularly Governor Abbott’s administration — which became political fodder for Democrats in the race. Hinojosa had sued Abbott’s office for being blocked from obtaining records of communication between Abbott and Musk. A district judge had supported Hinojosa, but it was blocked on appeal.
Blaise Gainey | The Texas Newsroom
The election night upset for Abbott could shift Musk’s relationship with the state government.
“He is certainly the most visible of all these billionaire-trillionaires, and it put him on the ballot in a way that, I think, was difficult for a lot of people to swallow,” Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said on Hello Houston. “And it hurt Republicans because his presence really did, I think, magnify these concerns.”
Musk’s initiatives in Texas
SpaceX launches rockets from Cameron County; it builds Starlink satellites in Bastrop County; and, notably, Musk and SpaceX are in the midst of opening a Terafab chip plant in Grimes County, east of College Station. The project would invest more than $16.8 billion and create 3,000 new jobs, and it utilized a $30 million grant from state funds.
At the time of the announcement in August, Musk had called it “the most epic chip-building effort,” and a press release stated SpaceX selected Texas as the Terafab site because of, among other things, “the state’s business-friendly climate.”
Notably, Grimes County voted for Abbott over Hinojosa by nearly 50 percentage points. Bastrop County voted for Hinojosa over Abbott by five points.
“For Musk, he has a lot of interest in the state,” Jeronimo Cortina, a political science professor at the University of Houston, said on Houston Matters. “I think that those interests are going to keep going forward in terms of his investments. I don’t think there’s going to be significant changes in terms of that — perhaps a little bit more regulation, in terms of how some of them are implemented.”
Hinojosa also campaigned heavily on scrutinizing data centers in general and Musk in particular. She called for a moratorium on data centers until the state legislature could implement regulations for them. As governor, she now has authority to implement such a moratorium, as well as to call on the legislature directly to create those regulations.
Though he joked about data centers in space on social media, such a concept is something SpaceX is pursuing. The company is developing satellites that would use solar energy — and wouldn’t require cooling in the vacuum of space — as artificial intelligence data centers. The Gigasat Factory in Bastrop is producing them, with the goal of deploying satellites as soon as late 2027.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, a state entity, had been discussing the potential sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX, Texas Monthly first reported in October. Abbott had stated, “that’s not coming up for a vote anytime soon.”
Under an Hinojosa governorship, such a deal seems much less likely. Members of the Parks and Wildlife Commission are appointed by Texas governors.
“He’s still going to be a kind of cornerstone of the financial empire that includes these big companies that are based in and around Texas,” Rottinghaus said. “You won’t see the last of Elon Musk. But for sure, his political influence is on the wane.”
Could SpaceX move?
When Musk announced SpaceX would move its headquarters from California to Texas to much fanfare in 2024, it was purportedly in direct response to California Governor Gavin Newsom signing a law that prohibited mandating teachers notify families of a student’s change in gender identity. Musk called it “the final straw” and said SpaceX would relocate “Because of this law.”
At the time, however, SpaceX was a private company. Earlier this year, SpaceX officially became publicly traded, launching with an IPO raising $75 billion. As a publicly traded company, SpaceX would likely have greater hurdles to relocate the company.
“As much as Musk has become a boogeyman in national politics, the reality is that he has important businesses and important business interests in Texas,” Joshua Blank, research director at the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said. “If democratic stewardship of the state means that some or multiple high-profile businesses start exiting Texas, that’s going to be the first campaign point made in the next election cycle.”
