Daniel Wolfram
Elon Musk is financing Republican campaigns at an unprecedented scale. Strategists say the GOP’s other problms are so toxic that attacking a billionaire would only be a distraction.
Elon Musk is pouring millions into Republican candidates during this midterm election on a scale never seen before.
Federal Election Commission filings show the tech billionaire has spent at least $276 million backing Republicans this cycle, with outside analyses pushing that number past $400 million.
That would make Musk a prime target for Democratic ads where the focus would be on how lopsided one man is making the midterms. However, they have not chosen to focus on him and this issue.
Focus on the bread-and-butter issues
Instead, campaign ads focus on daily household costs. An AdImpact analysis reported by The Washington Sun showed Democratic groups spent $176 million on corruption and $56 million on the economy, compared to just $2.7 million on ads naming Musk.
Voters already care much more about bread-and-butter issues like fuel and inflation than a billionaire using his means to influence an election.
As Democratic strategist Eddie Vale told The Washington Sun, “Trump and the Republican candidates are doing so badly now on the economy, on gas, that you don’t need to have a secondary or an outside bogeyman to gin people up.”
The lesson from Wisconsin
That approach marks a complete pivot from last year’s judicial battle in Wisconsin. Musk wore a foam cheese hat onstage. Democrats seized on the stunt immediately, plastering his face on advertisements across The Badger State.
Musk’s candidate lost by ten points. Even so, Ben Wikler, the former state party chair, noted that attacking raw wealth rarely works on its own.
As Wikler explained to the Sun, “When you connect the dots and point out that if he’s able to buy a victory for these politicians, then they’re going to do him favors that are going to cost [voters] money, that’s when it really clicks.”
Lone Star and New York battle
Texas remains the clear exception to the rule. In the Lone Star State, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has attacked Musk openly over his expanding footprint.
Musk has poured almost $34 million into Republican Ken Paxton’s Senate campaign through America PAC, alongside $190 million through the Senate Leadership Fund, according to The Texas Tribune.
Talarico used that information to attack Musk at a recent rally: “Elon Musk wants our land. He wants our water. He wants our taxpayer dollars.”
A similar thing happened in New York, where Democrat Cait Conley called Republican Mike Lawler a “puppet” for Musk on CNN.
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But across most battlegrounds, priorities look different. For everyday families, grocery bills and increasing gas prices matter far more than eccentric billionaires you only know from the internet.
