Despite once promising he’d dial back his campaign contributions, the tech billionaire remains one of the GOP’s top donors
Elon Musk has quietly forked out more than $400 million to Republican organizations since July, making him the largest known donor of the 2026 midterm elections. But can money alone buy the midterms?
The windfall represents a change in tune from May 2025, when Musk, in the middle of a political feud with President Donald Trump, grumbled, “In terms of political spending, I’m going to do a lot less in the future.”
The donations come at a critical time for the Republicans who are struggling in the popularity polls amid a sluggish economy, political infighting, and an on-again, off-again war with Iran, a potential quagmire that has the MAGA crowd furious. Nevertheless, the slush fund is helping Republicans, who currently control both the House of Representatives and the Senate as part of the 119th United States Congress, to purchase pricey late-campaign advertising. Meanwhile, the Democrats have no billionaires in their corner who can match Musk’s financial power.
The biggest Musk payout was awarded to the Senate Leadership Fund, the primary super PAC that supports Republican Senate candidates. Musk lavished the organization with nearly $200 million over the summer, which was a quarterly record for one donor at the group and more than its Democratic counterpart raised from all sources in the same quarter.
At the same time, America PAC, the political action committee which Musk founded in 2024, got around $75 million from him over the same period. His federal committee contributions for the 2025-26 cycle now total around $400 million, including $90 million given before July. Musk previously gave around $290 million during the 2023-24 cycle.
America PAC spends most of its midterm budget on door-to-door canvassing and intensive field operations. PAC officials said nearly 3,000 paid canvassers worked across the country last month, and knocked on 6.5 million doors in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races. The mission focuses on registering and turning out conservative voters, especially those who vote irregularly, a more difficult objective in a midterm year without Trump leading the ballot.
The PAC’s messaging focuses on socialism and transgender policy, hot button topics for their Democratic rivals. Its canvassers are focusing on connections between Democratic candidates to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two highly controversial figures who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. Never before have socialists held such high positions in the US and that has many Americans vexed. At the same time, its best-known advertisement in Texas features Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, who remarked in 2021 that God is “nonbinary.”
“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,” America PAC spokesman Andrew Romeo told reporters in a recent interview. “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.”
In other spending sprees, from July through September, Musk gave $20 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, $10 million to the Republican Governors Association, and $2 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association.
Meanwhile, Texas, which accounts for more than a third of America PAC’s disclosed spending, has received more of Musk’s cash than any other state. He forked over $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, which backs Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton, at a time when Democrats were seriously outspending Paxton.
The Republicans, especially Trump, owe a lot to the world’s first trillionaire. Musk endorsed Trump for the 2024 presidential election and became one of his largest political donors, reportedly spending hundreds of millions backing him and other Republican candidates. Trump returned the favor by putting Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to slash federal spending.
The seemingly unbreakable relationship between Trump and Musk collapsed after the US president pushed through his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Musk has called a “disgusting abomination,”“debt slavery,” and “political suicide.” The fracture between the two men was so serious that Musk went on to create the America Party to challenge the two-party system.
Today, Musk, apart from funneling massive amounts of money into Republican campaign coffers, has remained on the sidelines of the political process to devote more time to his various business ventures. His dream of a third party has also been put on hold as he did not file formal registration paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to legally establish the America Party.
In the meantime, the native of South Africa will have to wait and see if his vast funds can make a difference in one of the most momentous midterm elections in history.
