Maybe Elon Musk needs to move to Idaho.
Musk abandoned California a few years back because he chafed against the state’s COVID-19 restrictions and taxes. He relocated SpaceX and Tesla corporate headquarters to Texas, where taxes were low, environmental restrictions were lax and the state government was in the total control of MAGA Republicans who welcomed him and his money with greedy, open arms.
It was a sweet deal for Musk that went completely sour on election night when Democrats won the U.S. Senate seat, ousted GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, took control of the state House, won every statewide elected office, from attorney general to railroad commissioner, and beat Republicans in every race for the state Supreme Court.
This upheaval in Lone Star State politics came about despite Musk having spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get Republicans elected, not only in Texas, but all over the country – including $586,000 from Musk’s political action committee that went to GOP candidate John Braun in Washington’s Third Congressional District.
Braun got clobbered by incumbent Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, just as Musk’s favorite candidate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, got beaten handily by Democratic rising star James Talarico. In fact, Musk got nothing for spending an estimated $474 million trying to hold back the blue wave that engulfed Republicans all over the country, up and down the ballot.
At least the world’s richest man had a sense of humor about it, joking that his “election-interfering space lasers” had not worked. I guess it’s easy to laugh off wasting nearly half a billion bucks when you are a trillionaire.
What is heartening about this is that it is another example of massive campaign donations failing to buy elections. In many races, donations from billionaires appear to have produced the opposite effect by motivating outraged citizens to vote against candidates favored by the oligarchs.
One of the few states in the country that resisted the blue wave was Idaho, where a ballot measure to undo the state’s hardline abortion ban failed. If Texas gets too unfriendly for Musk, maybe he can head for the outskirts of Coeur d’Alene and set up shop in a survivalist compound.
He’d fit right in.
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