You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. The world’s richest person has quietly become by far the biggest known midterm donor, trying to save Republicans’ Senate majority with some of the largest donations in American political history.
Elon Musk has shown less public interest in elections in recent months, but he has patched up his relationship with President Trump and quietly spent enormous amounts to help Republicans in the midterms.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times Theodore Schleifer has written about Silicon Valley politics for a decade. Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than $276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections. The staggering amount of money makes Mr.
Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Thursday. In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, gave a total of $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team.
In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over $76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters.
The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races. Musk has already given far more money, about $366 million, to federal committees during the 2025-26 election cycle than he did during the 2024 election, when he laid out roughly $290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans to power. He has given even more in undisclosed donations during both elections, according to people briefed on the giving.
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