Musk’s half-billion-dollar midterm bet falls flat

NEW YORK: Elon Musk spent nearly half a billion dollars on the US midterm elections, but the record expenditure yielded little for the world's richest man and leader of SpaceX and Tesla.
Just three of the 43 Republicans Musk backed for the House of Representatives won on Tuesday night, compared to 33 who lost. The remaining seven races had not been called by late on Wednesday, though Democrats are running ahead in tallies so far.
Of the seven Senate Republican candidates Musk backed, six lost and one race hangs in the balance. In that last race, Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola is narrowly ahead with 77 per cent of votes counted.
In Texas, where SpaceX and Tesla are headquartered and where Musk plans a chipmaking venture, Musk also came up empty after spending almost $230 million on the Senate contest, $5 million on the governor's race, and $500,000 on the lieutenant governor vote.
Shares of SpaceX and Tesla fell 3.9 per cent and 3.3 per cent respectively on Wednesday on investor concerns that a Democratic-controlled Congress would tighten scrutiny of Musk's Starlink satellite service and his AI data centre projects.
Musk's outsized donations, which helped drive spending in this election cycle to a new record, have provoked the ire of Democrats who have said investigations into Musk and his businesses topped their agenda. With their newfound power, Democrats say they are adding campaign finance reform to their wish list.
Musk spent $445 million on federal races alone, according to non-partisan campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.
Political advertising tracker AdImpact said the Texas Senate contest was the most expensive US non-presidential race ever, with roughly $573.2 million in total spending.
'We've just sent a message to every millionaire mega donor, to every trillionaire mega donor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system. In this state, in this country, power belongs to the people,' US Senator-elect James Talarico said in his acceptance speech late on Tuesday in Austin, Texas.
The Democrat, whom Musk targeted with $153.5 million worth of attack ads, compared himself and Musk to the biblical David and Goliath, saying: 'Tonight we beat Goliath.'
Early on Wednesday, as the election results became clear, Musk posted on X: 'Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time.' — Reuters