Elon Musk jokes after GOP midterm defeat

Elon Musk joked on Wednesday about Republicans' defeat in the US midterm elections after spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help the party.

Democrats captured both the Senate and the House of Representatives on Tuesday, taking control of Congress from Republicans. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time,” Musk wrote on X, adding a shrug emoji.

Campaign finance tracker OpenSecrets said Musk contributed nearly half a billion dollars to Republican political efforts, making him the largest individual contributor in a federal election cycle since unlimited election spending was allowed in 2010. His donations mostly went to his Republican-leaning America PAC and to the Republican Senate Leadership Fund super PAC.

The Republican Senate Leadership Fund used Musk's $158 million in September donations to support Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate in Texas. Paxton's Democratic challenger, James Talarico, faced more than $200 million in opposition from outside spending groups. Talarico defeated Paxton, a close ally of Trump, to become the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas since 1994.

At a victory rally in Austin, Talarico said his campaign went up against “the richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world and the entire Washington, DC establishment.”

Democrat Gina Hinojosa also unseated incumbent Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Hinojosa asked after her victory whether Texas belonged to its people or to “the billionaires trying to dismantle our schools” and corporations “trying to buy it up.”

Talarico and Hinojosa both campaigned on tighter regulation of AI data centers. The spread of data centers across Texas has become an election issue as residents worry about electricity bills, water use and strain on the power grid. Musk has moved the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX and X to Texas.

“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Musk wrote on X after the result.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the government cannot limit independent political spending by corporations, unions and other groups. A lower court decision allowed such organisations to raise unlimited money from donors.