(AFP) – Hundreds of millions of dollars spent, with little to show for it. The rout of President Donald Trump and his Republicans in the US midterm elections was also a defeat for Elon Musk and for the massive campaign spending meant to sway voters. Democrats captured both the Senate and House of Representatives on Tuesday in a stunning rejection of Trump’s political agenda, winning races in which conservative groups had poured in far more outside money than their liberal counterparts. “This might have been the biggest defeat for big money in American political history,” Logan Phillips, founder of the election forecasting site Race to the White House, wrote on X. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” Musk said on X, with a shrug emoji.
Musk contributed nearly half a billion dollars to Republican efforts, making him the largest individual contributor in a federal election cycle since 2010, according to campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets. That year, the Supreme Court ruled that the government cannot limit political spending by corporations, unions, and other groups acting independently of candidates, opening the way for big donors to pour vast sums into elections, sometimes anonymously.
– ‘Our own Goliaths’ –
More than $200 million of Musk’s money went to support Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate in Texas. Democrat James Talarico defeated Paxton, a close Trump ally, to become the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas since 1994. “In this race, we went up against our own Goliaths. The richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world and the entire Washington, DC establishment,” Talarico said. He also targeted billionaires “who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens” and who “want us at each other’s throats.”
In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown unseated Republican Senator Jon Husted in the country’s second most expensive race, with more than $500 million spent. In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson in the governor’s race, after he poured more than $200 million of his fortune into his bid, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In Ohio, biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy lost the governor’s race to Democrat Amy Acton after putting an estimated $36 million of his own money into it.
AI industry money also fell short. In South Carolina, American Mission, the Republican arm of the Leading the Future network backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, put about $2.7 million behind Senator Darline Graham, who lost to Democrat Annie Andrews in a state Trump won by 18 points. Building the Future, a new data center industry super PAC tied to Leading the Future, had made Graham its first candidate to back.
– ‘Cannot yield’ –
Democrats also had billionaire backing. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg spent $80 million on House, Senate, and governor races, then added $36 million in the final days, Politico reported. Bloomberg’s political adviser Howard Wolfson told CNN that “money is not determinative, but it is helpful,” noting that Republicans held a significant financial advantage. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who put $11.5 million into the super PAC backing Talarico, said “we should get money out of politics.”
“And while people like Elon are spending outrageous amounts to keep authoritarian clowns in power, those of us who believe in the ideals of America cannot yield,” Hoffman wrote on X late Tuesday, defending his largesse. In California, a ballot proposal for a one-time 5 percent tax on the state’s billionaires seemed to have failed after some of its wealthiest residents spent hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat it.
– Alex PIGMAN
© 2024 AFP
