Musk has started spending money to help Ken Paxton. Will it help change the course of the Texas Senate race?

(CNN) — For months, Texas Republicans have anxiously awaited the arrival of national resources to help boost Ken Paxton, one of the GOP’s most vulnerable Senate candidates.

Now, Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has entered the scene, this week disclosing the first spending from his super PAC to benefit Paxton and raising GOP hopes that the floodgates soon will open wide to help the Texas attorney general overcome a deep financial deficit with his Democratic rival James Talarico. Other groups, including a super PAC associated with Sen. Ted Cruz, also have begun to step up their activity on Paxton’s behalf.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump’s political operation disclosed $10 million in spending to aid Paxton, marking the first major outlay by Trump’s main super PAC to help Republicans in the midterms.

Musk’s America PAC is largely funded by the billionaire himself, who has become one of the biggest individual donors shaping US politics — and a major player in Texas politics specifically.

With its activity, America PAC has signaled the Texas contest is one of its priorities as it plans massive spending to shape the outcome of the midterms. One person who has spoken to the group in Texas says they are hiring for what they believe to be an expansive turnout operation in the state.

Officials with the Musk super PAC have not disclosed how much they intend to spend to aid Paxton’s bid. But Texas Republican operatives who are not involved with America PAC said it makes sense that Musk, who has made Texas the base of his growing corporate empire, would want to go all in for Paxton.

“The business interests, the long-term investment that he is making, the Musk operation politically does not need to have a Democrat in their backyard,” said Matt Langston, a GOP strategist in the state. “They will invest. They will get involved in a big way.”

PAC officials indicated that political rather than business considerations are driving their decision-making.

In a statement to CNN, America PAC spokesman Andrew Romeo said the Musk group “is working in full coordination with the entire GOP apparatus and investing in the states and districts that will decide control of the House and Senate.”

“Our only priority is ensuring Republicans keep full control of Washington and stopping the lunatic left from bringing us back to the days of open borders, rampant crime and woke policies.”

CNN also has reached out to Paxton’s campaign for comment.

Influence in Texas

Musk has deep ties to Texas, relocating several of his businesses’ headquarters to the state. Tesla and SpaceX are part of a joint venture developing Terafab, a massive chipmaking factory outside Houston.

As attorney general, Paxton launched an investigation of advertising boycotts on platforms such as X, several months after Musk sued a group of advertisers and major companies accusing them of illegally conspiring to pull their ads from X.

But Musk’s allies also have sparred in court with Paxton over his orders that certain records tied to operations of Starbase, the recently incorporated Texas town that is home to SpaceX, must be publicly released under the state’s open records law.

Musk said during a radio interview with Gov. Greg Abbott in July that he “love(s)” Texas and its friendly business climate.

“It’s a great state to do business in. It’s super supportive and, I think, really emblematic of American values,” Musk told Abbott, who was filling in for radio host Sean Hannity. “I love being here and I love being a Texan.”

Musk has deepened his political ties to Texas in other ways this election cycle.

He has given $3 million to Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the state’s powerful tort reform group. He has also donated $2 million to the Judicial Fairness PAC, which works to elect GOP candidates for judicial positions. And he has made six-figure contributions to each of the state’s top three leaders: Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and state House Speaker Dustin Burrows.

Meanwhile, one of his lawyers, Chris Gober, is on track to join Congress next year. Gober won a Republican primary in March for an open House seat in Central Texas that strongly favors the GOP.

Some Republicans have voiced frustration that the cost of defending a Senate seat in deep-red Texas skyrocketed after the controversial Paxton toppled incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn in the primary, aided by Trump’s endorsement.

Democrats need a net gain of just four seats to flip the US Senate.

Paxton has confronted an array of scandals in recent years, including a 2023 impeachment by the Texas House of Representatives over allegations of bribery and corruption. He was later acquitted of all the charges by the state Senate.

Republican leaders had openly called for Trump to deploy some of the roughly $400 million sitting in his MAGA Inc. war chest to help Paxton.

“I think all of our allies out there, including the president and his team and their resources, need to be brought to bear on Texas,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Fox News earlier this week.

On Saturday, Paxton’s potential Texas counterpart, Cruz, also said Republicans need to boost support.

“I’m telling everybody we need to do more. This is a very real fight right now. Republicans are being massively outspent. I’m spending a lot of time traveling with Ken Paxton, raising money. The super PAC that supports me has spent over $2 million in this race supporting Ken Paxton, and it did that because nobody else was at the time, and we need to step up,” Cruz said on FOX News.

The $10 million disclosed Saturday by MAGA Inc. to benefit Paxton came a day after Trump told reporters that he planned to direct some of his cash reserves to “people that I think are good Republicans” and “can win or are closing to winning.”

Even before the MAGA Inc. influx, Paxton’s side was getting more help on the airwaves after weeks of lagging behind his rival.

Republican outside groups, led by the pro-Paxton Lone Star Liberty PAC, were spending a combined $11 million on advertising this week, swamping the roughly $4 million coming from Talarico’s campaign, according to data from AdImpact, which tracks political commercials.

That’s in sharp contrast to August when Democrats spent $13.3 million in advertising in the race to Republicans’ $4.7 million.

James Dickey, a former Texas Republican Party chairman who now runs a government affairs firm, insists that the money concerns swirling around Paxton’s candidacy are overblown, pointing to several well-funded Democrats who have tried and fail to win statewide office in Texas in recent years.

“History is replete with examples that money is necessary but not sufficient to win an election,” he said. “There is no reason to believe that Attorney General Paxton will not have enough funds.”

Musk returns to the Republican fold

On Thursday night, the Musk PAC reported spending roughly $840,000 to benefit 15 House and Senate candidates, a modest sum that is expected to grow dramatically in the weeks ahead, given Musk’s commitment to help Republicans retain control of Congress during Trump’s final two years in office.

Nearly $250,000 of the sum backed Paxton, the biggest share of America PAC’s first tranche of candidate-focused spending, but those proportions could change as the committee ramps up its spending.

On Friday night, the group disclosed spending another $2.9 million on midterm races, nearly half of it going toward the contest in Texas.

The early Musk money across congressional races has gone to printing expenses, signaling its use for direct outreach to voters in the form of mailings or other political literature.

Separately, America PAC also invested in digital advertising in key battlegrounds, although that spending has focused on boosting registration among targeted voters, rather than advocating for individual candidates. One such ad tells Facebook users in Texas that “your state could flip control of the Senate” and encourages them to check their registration status now.

America PAC’s new burst of activity marks a significant Musk reengagement with Republicans, more than a year after the billionaire broke with Trump and threatened to start his own political party. He has since reconciled with the president, and the third-party idea fizzled.

Republicans say they are eager to see the billionaire spend big across the country but privately hope he maintains a lower profile during the fall campaign. His brief tenure overseeing the federal Department of Government Efficiency made him a household name and a villain among a federal workforce affected by the DOGE cuts.

“I think he has learned a lot from his experience at DOGE,” said one Republican strategist involved in the midterms who believes Musk will remain more in the background this fall. The person also praised Musk’s political team — headed by a Chris Young, an experienced operative who directed the PAC’s 2024 effort — as “real pros.”

In the 2024 election, Musk spent nearly $300 million boosting Trump and Republicans, much of it aimed at building a ground game in key battlegrounds to turn out voters. But his high-profile effort last year to flip majority control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court backfired. The Republican he supported lost by 10 percentage points to the Democrat.

“I think I got a little too involved in politics. I got carried away, frankly,” Musk said during a July interview with The Economist, reflecting on his DOGE tenure.

Democrats say they will respond to the expected fundraising onslaught by seeking to make Musk a lightning rod in battleground races.

“Elon Musk is toxic and one of the most unpopular figures in America,” CJ Warnke, communications director for House Majority PAC, the main House Democratic super PAC, told CNN. “As we saw in Wisconsin in 2025, he will be a drag on any Republican campaign this fall.”

That strategy was already on display this week.

A day after the first spending disclosures by Musk’s PAC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee blasted out a news release, singling out several House Republicans benefiting from Musk’s money. Republican lawmakers, it said, were relying on billionaire donors “to rescue them.”

This story has been updated to include additional detail.

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CNN’s David Wright contributed to this report.