Dem
51
Ties
3
GOP
46
Ever since he became a conservative (or whatever you would call his political philosophy these days), Elon Musk has established a pretty clear pattern: He invests heavily, loses bigly, whines loudly, and announces he's done with politics. Then, once the next cycle rolls around, he's right back at it.
The highest profile example of this probably came last year, when Musk tried to single-handedly secure the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the Republicans, spending well north of $20 million to try to elect conservative judge Brad Schimel, contributing substantially toward making it the most expensive judicial race in American history. When the votes were counted, the Democrats' candidate, Susan Crawford, was not only the winner, she was the winner in a rout. The final tally was 55% for her, 45% for Schimel, which is a huge margin for a purple state where statewide elections are usually decided by a few points. Musk's cash was not only ineffectual, but may have actually hurt the cause, because Musk is so toxic. At that time, Musk said he was done spending on politics. At that time, we wrote that we'd believe it when we saw it.
It was not hard to guess that Musk would not actually step back. First, he always gets petulant, like a small child, when things don't go his way. But, like his good buddy Trump, it takes just days (sometimes hours) before he's completely forgotten everything he said while throwing his tantrum. On top of that, Musk has a giant ego, and a compulsive need to impose himself on anything and everything. And the money means nothing to him. For him, blowing $20 million is like the average person blowing $100. Not nothing, but not enough to make any sort of permanent dent in the bottom line.
Musk did semi-learn, from the 2025 disaster, that it's sometimes best to keep his name out of things. So, there are probably races right now where he and his PAC are mucking around, and it's not publicly known. However, there are at least two Senate races where the Musk connection is crystal clear. The first of those is the contest in Texas, where Musk's America PAC has spent $1.6 million to try to save the seat for the GOP and to get Ken Paxton (R) elected. The second is Maine, where America PAC has kicked in $170,000 to try to help Sen. Susan Collins (R) defeat lumberjack Troy Jackson (D).
We honestly don't know what the heck Musk is thinking. $1.6 million is a pittance to him, and $170,000 is roughly 1/10 of a pittance. He's not going to affect either race, in any meaningful way, with such small outlays. Maybe he's waiting until October to back up the Brinks truck, or maybe he's also sending money through other, below-the-radar, PACs. But if the former is true, October is probably too late. And if the latter is true, then why would he allow ANY of his spending to become public knowledge?
And therein lies the problem. Musk is so toxic that his involvement is certain to cost a candidate at least some votes. That may not be a huge problem in Texas, since the people who like Ken Paxton apparently have hides of steel, and can tolerate almost any sort of bad or obnoxious behavior. But it's certainly a problem in Maine, where Collins wants that sweet, sweet Musk money, but doesn't want the fallout that comes with that. She was asked over the weekend about Musk's spending, and tried to thread a very fine needle, decreeing that she agrees with Musk about cutting government spending, but that she didn't agree with the way he tried to do it (i.e., DOGE).
Our point is: Spend enough money to matter, or else stay away completely so you don't risk contaminating your preferred candidates. But for Musk to indulge in this half-hearted electioneering seems to be the worst of both worlds: too little money to really help, but more than enough Musk to really hurt.
Oh, and not only is Musk holding back, money-wise, he's actively taking steps to make himself more obnoxious and toxic. How? Why, with a little site called votesafe.org. Given that friend-of-Musk Donald Trump is trying hard to kick people off of voter rolls, Americans have good reason to be nervous that they might have an issue with their registration. The correct site to check, and make sure, is vote.gov.
Certainly, votesafe.org (and we are very deliberately not linking to it; the above link goes to a story about the site), sounds legitimate. And it's being aggressively promoted on social media right now, with ads like these:
The first clue that something is fishy here comes when you try to use votesafe.org. While vote.gov does not ask for personal information, votesafe.org demands the following:
Further, while it's invisible to the user, the site installs cookies that collect:
Once votesafe has this information, it uses it to hit you with targeted political advertising on Instagram, Facebook, eX-Twitter, YouTube and other sites. It also forwards the information to marketing firms that use your information to try to sell you products.
As readers have probably guessed by now, votesafe.org is owned and operated by Musk's America PAC. It is also possible, though not yet proven, that some of the information it's compiling was made possible by the data thefts perpetrated by DOGE. For example, most states won't give out people's voter registration status to private vendors. But some version of that information is in the various databases that DOGE pirated.
This is all kinds of sleazy, of course. And it's also much more likely to be effective than spending a paltry amount of money on Susan Collins' campaign. But Americans hate, hate, hate to have their privacy abused and exploited like that. And if this project, which is hardly secret, gets wide attention, then Musk will become the most radioactive thing this side of Chernobyl. Frankly, it seems like something that should be getting more attention from the political media. (Z)