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The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, spent nearly half a billion dollars on the midterms, including $224 million in Texas. Yet the Texas Republicans he supported – Ken Paxton for Senate and Greg Abbott for governor – got blown away in a supposedly ruby-red state.
It was a declaration that voters would no longer tolerate Donald Trump’s abuses of power and rank incompetence. It was also a repudiation of Musk’s attempts to make the will of the people subservient to the bankrolls of the Republicans’ oligarch pals.
Musk thought his spending would buy him cooperation on his growing business enterprises in Texas as well as the data centers needed to power them. It didn’t work out that way. CNBC noted that the Democrat who defeated Abbott, Gina Hinojosa, “has called for a moratorium on new data centers, an end to industry tax breaks, and requirements that developers cover their full electricity costs.”