While he was building rockets and electric cars and becoming the world’s richest man, Elon Musk mostly stayed out of politics, donating relatively modest amounts to candidates from both parties and voting for Democrats for president, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
But Musk’s political restraint has vanished over the last two years as the magnate pivoted to using his vast wealth, celebrity and outsize online presence to become one of former President Trump’s most visible and deep-pocketed champions.
Federal campaign filings made public late Tuesday show that over a three-month period ending Sept. 30, Musk poured almost $75 million into a new super PAC that has spent more than $110 million to support Republican candidates.
Most of the money has been spent on canvassing and get-out-the-vote operations to help Trump. But the group is also bolstering Republicans in some of the nation’s tightest congressional races, which could help determine whether the GOP keeps its razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.
Musk’s organization, America PAC, has spent more on California congressional races than in any other state, allocating nearly $2.8 million to help embattled Republican incumbents in the Central Valley and Southern California, the new filings show.
“I think he literally thinks he can swing the election himself and that’s why he is not doing the traditional business-guy things, like being vague and like a politician,” said Edward Niedermeyer, author of “Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors.” “He has to be all in … because that’s the way he has succeeded in everything. He memes things into reality.”
Musk has said he shifted toward Republicans because Democrats have become too liberal. But his expansive business portfolio — which includes Tesla, SpaceX and its broadband internet subsidiary, Starlink — also stands to benefit from a supportive Congress and an attentive ally in the White House.
The ear of the president and friends in Congress could help Musk secure lucrative federal contracts, tax credits to boost sales for his electric cars, and more favorable outcomes for his growing number of clashes with federal regulators, experts say.
“So much of what Musk does involves government oversight or government contracts that having what he sees as a favorable House, Senate and White House is very important to his business,” said Larry Noble, who teaches campaign finance law at American University’s Washington College of Law and previously worked for 13 years as the general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.
Tesla is facing a lawsuit from the federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws over allegations that Black employees at the car company’s Fremont, Calif., plant were racially harassed, as well as several investigations into the company’s claims that Teslas are “full self-driving.”
The Justice Department also sued SpaceX last year over allegations that the company discriminated against asylees and refugees by refusing to hire them because of their citizenship status.
Trump has previously said he wants to assert more control over the Justice Department. With Trump back in the White House, Noble said, Musk could “call Trump and say: ‘DOJ should stop these cases against me.’”
After the National Labor Relations Board accused SpaceX of illegally firing eight workers at its plant in Hawthorne, the company sued in federal court, seeking to declare the agency unconstitutional. And last month, Musk said SpaceX would sue the Federal Aviation Administration over what he called “regulatory overreach” after the agency proposed more than $600,000 in penalties.
Trump also has pledged to lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy and to dismantle the traditional civil service to empower his loyalists.
“You look at the way Trump governs, cutting back any kind of regulatory authority as much as possible,” said Niedermeyer, the business journalist, “and you look at how Elon Musk runs his companies, as if the regulations don’t apply to him. … That fits together perfectly.”
Musk and Trump have embraced each other since Musk’s July endorsement, with Trump mentioning Musk by name in speeches, inviting him onstage during a rally in Pennsylvania and sitting for a two-hour conversation, streamed live on X.
During the talk, which was visible on X to Musk’s 201 million followers, Trump flattered Musk as an efficiency expert, saying: “You’re the greatest cutter.” Then he mused: “I need an Elon Musk. I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts.”
Unlike many super PACs, which spend their war chests on television advertising, Musk’s group is focusing almost exclusively on so-called ground game operations, including door-to-door canvassing and voter outreach.
Having support in the House could be crucial for Musk, Noble said. Representatives have the power to order oversight hearings and cut — or threaten to cut — the budgets of agencies that “don’t do what Congress wants.”
Musk’s group is spending to support candidates in 18 congressional districts. Nationwide, Republicans are defending House seats in 15 battleground districts, and Democrats need to pick up four to regain control of the chamber.
If embattled Republicans keep their jobs, “it’s going to be because of this outside money,” said one Democratic consultant who wasn’t authorized to speak about the races publicly. “No one expected Elon Musk to get involved in House races to the degree he has.”
Musk’s America PAC has spent $1.1 million in the 41st Congressional District in Riverside County to support incumbent Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, who is running against Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor.
Musk’s group has become the second-largest outside spender in the tight race, behind only the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC that defends incumbent Republicans, federal data show.
Canvassers are going door-to-door in the district, which includes Corona, Menifee and Palm Springs, with doorknob hang tags that say that Rollins is “too liberal for California families” and that Calvert will “bring back the American Dream.”
Calvert has been in Congress since 1993 and chairs the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the Defense Department budget. SpaceX has secured hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contracts, including a $150-million award for rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Because Calvert chairs such a powerful committee, “there is more industry interest in protecting his seat,” said Erin Covey, the House editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Coby Eiss, Rollins’ campaign manager, said the race is “boiling down to a few billionaires and special interests funding Ken Calvert, versus more than 70,000 grassroots donors funding Will Rollins.”
Calvert was one of 14 members of Congress from California who sent a letter in August to the California Coastal Commission, urging officials to approve a U.S. Air Force plan to green-light up to 36 SpaceX rockets per year from Vandenberg.
“SpaceX employs over 6,000 people in Southern California and makes invaluable contributions to our national security, so it’s a no-brainer that Ken, like many others in the delegation, would support their mission at Vandenberg,” said Calvin Moore, a Calvert campaign spokesman.
Another signatory on the letter was Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Seal Beach), who is in a competitive race for reelection in Orange County.
America PAC has spent more than $940,000 on canvassing and digital media to back Steel over Democrat Derek Tran, filings show.
Paul Iskajyan, a Tran campaign spokesman, said Steel “can’t stand on her own record, so she’s being propped up by a billionaire weirdo.” A Steel campaign spokesman declined to comment.
The PAC has also spent more than $700,000 to support Republican Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in the Central Valley, who also signed the SpaceX letter. Valadao is running against Democrat Rudy Salas, who in 2022 lost to Valadao by about 3,100 votes.
Musk’s political metamorphosis goes beyond money. The billionaire now bashes the left’s “woke mind virus” and trumpets debunked theories from the right — including that Democrats encourage illegal immigration to shift America’s voting base in their favor and that the Biden-Harris administration has shortchanged American hurricane victims while heaping money on immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization.
Musk did not respond to an interview request sent to SpaceX. But he has previously contended that the Democratic Party had shifted “far to the left,” forcing his jump to the GOP.
“The Democrats have become the party of the rich and entitled (just look at their donor list) and the Republicans have become the party of the people,” Musk, who is worth well over $200 billion, said on X this month.
The 53-year-old businessman has made clear that he felt mistreated when Democrats, including Biden, criticized him or failed to acknowledge his achievements.
In 2021, the Biden administration didn’t invite Musk and Tesla to a White House summit for electric car makers, a slight linked to the company’s refusal to embrace unionization. The tech journalist Kara Swisher said she spoke to Musk, who was “very angry,” a message she passed on to the White House.
Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents part of Silicon Valley, recently told CNN he thought the reason Democrats “started to lose Elon was actually personal.”
Khanna said the party’s leaders should have praised Musk’s groundbreaking achievements in space and his leadership on electric cars, despite his nonunion stance. In 2022, Musk said on X that the Biden administration had done “everything it can to sideline & ignore Tesla.”
“We didn’t celebrate it and he felt offended,” Khanna said.
The billionaire said in May 2022 that Democrats, once the “kindness party,” had “become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.” But, he said in July of that year that Trump should still “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.”
By this year, though, Musk’s disgust with Democrats had become more pronounced. He excoriated Gov. Gavin Newsom for signing a bill that will prohibit school districts from requiring teachers to notify families about their children’s gender identity changes.
This followed Musk’s own public falling out with his daughter, who had undergone a gender transition. Calling the gender law “the final straw,” Musk said this summer he would protest California’s “woke” agenda by moving the headquarters for both X and SpaceX from California to Texas.
Less than an hour after a young gunman attempted to assassinate the Republican presidential nominee in mid-July, Musk made his support public for the first time. “I fully endorse President Trump,” he posted on X, “and hope for his rapid recovery.”
While most business titans prefer to wield power behind the scenes, the convention-defying Musk literally bounded onto a campaign stage early this month in Butler, Pa., to support Trump. He jumped up and down, his hands over his head. Musk lauded Trump for “courage under fire” and urged a massive crowd to register and “vote, vote, vote!”
But Musk has gone even further, peddling some of the Republican’s most inflammatory claims.
Musk has, for example, amplified the thoroughly debunked Republican assertion that victims of recent hurricanes in the Southeast have been deprived of government benefits because U.S. tax dollars had been diverted to immigrants. He has also stoked the notion that the U.S. voting system is vulnerable to fraud, despite multiple studies showing that elections are secure.
In a recent X video interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk promoted another extreme charge: that Democrats intentionally enable illegal immigration and shower government “handouts” on the newcomers “that make [immigrants] beholden to the Democratic Party.”
This was part of a program, Musk insisted, to “legalize so many illegals that [in] … the next election, there won’t be any swing states and [it] will be a single-party country, just like California is a single-party state.” There is no evidence that illegal immigrants register, or vote, in large numbers.
Trump suggested that Musk is too busy with his multiple endeavors for a job in a Trump administration. But the former president told a Fox News interviewer on Sunday that he planned to get his wealthiest supporter involved. Trump even suggested a new title for Musk: “secretary of cost-cutting.”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-10-16/2024-election-elon-musk-donald-trump
