Elon Musk has authorised his super political action committee (PAC) to spend up to $120M (£90M) turning out Republican voters before the 3 November midterm elections. The commitment marks a year of open hostility with President Donald Trump. It restarts the operation that made Musk the largest individual donor in a single United States election cycle.
The figure comes from two people who have been briefed on the plan, and what it buys is less obvious than the number suggests. The committee behind it, America PAC, closed its last set of accounts with $326,017 (£244,000) in hand, and the drive it ran last year has since landed in the hands of a Wisconsin prosecutor.
The Account Behind the Pledge Is Nearly Empty
Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings cover the 15 months from 1 January 2025 to 31 March 2026. Over that stretch, the committee took in $49.86M (£37.4M), paid out $51.76M (£38.8M), and finished with less than a third of a million dollars, as the chart below sets out.
Individual contributions accounted for all but $11,857 (£8,888) of the money raised, and that remainder was refunds on operating costs. The balance ran down as it went: $2.22M (£1.67M) at the start of the period, roughly a seventh of that at the end.
A nine-figure drive therefore means a fresh cheque rather than a drawdown of what is already there. The split inside the last round of spending shows what the money buys.
Operating expenditures ran to $38.95M (£29.2M) and other disbursements to $12.72M (£9.5M), while independent expenditures, the category covering money spent expressly backing or opposing a named candidate, came to $87,133 (£65,000). That is money going on staff and doorsteps rather than on screens.
From Third-Party Threat to Door-Knocking Budget
Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency for four months before falling out with Trump over the administration's tax and spending bill, then floated a third party and said his political giving would shrink. By late last year he was writing cheques to Republicans again.
Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio hold the first Senate targets. House contests in California, Wisconsin, and Washington are also in scope, and talks continue over three further Senate seats, in North Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. The tools are door-knocking, direct mail, and digital advertising, aimed at conservatives who tend to skip years without a presidential contest.
Chris Young, named as treasurer on the committee's own filings and described as Musk's senior political adviser, will run it. Andrew Romeo, speaking for the committee, said Republicans were well placed to hold Congress and that 'we're excited to again be part of the team.' He would not confirm a budget, which leaves the $100M (£75M) to $120M range resting on what those two people say.
A Wisconsin Deadline Sits in the Middle of It
The turnout model being revived is already under scrutiny. On 9 July, the Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5 to 1 that there was probable cause Musk had breached the state's election bribery statute. The finding rests on a social media post offering $1M (£750,000) to people who voted in the 2025 state Supreme Court election, and two complaints have gone to prosecutors, as the second graphic shows.
David Lasee, the district attorney in Brown County, has 40 days to report back on any action he takes. A referral is not a charge, and the commission has made no finding that Musk broke the law. A separate civil case brought by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign is pending in the same county.
Legal work is already a visible line in the accounts, with $2.3M (£1.72M) going to the law firm Lex Politica between February 2025 and March 2026. The same operation reported more than 10 million doors knocked during the 2024 cycle, when it spent above $260M (£195M). Whatever the next cheque buys, some of it will go the same way.
