Texas Democratic US Senate candidate James Talarico on Monday took direct aim at far-right billionaire Elon Musk, the single biggest donor to the campaign of Republican rival Ken Paxton.

Speaking at an event in Denton, Texas, Talarico decried Musk’s attempts to flood the Senate race with money, as recent financial disclosures show the SpaceX CEO has spent at least $158 million trying to boost Paxton’s campaign.

“Musk is trying to buy this Senate seat in Texas,” Talarico said. “We just found out that he is almost singlehandedly bankrolling this effort to install Ken Paxton in the US Senate and defeat this movement that we’ve built in our state.”

Talarico: “We just found out that [Elon Musk] is almost single-handedly bankrolling this effort to install Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate and defeat this movement…Elon Musk wants our land. He wants our water. He wants his very own personal United States senator. He is trying to buy Texas.”
— Bulwark Clips (@BulwarkClips) October 19, 2026

Talarico outlined the ways Musk’s money has impacted the Senate campaign.

“In all likelihood, if you have seen an attack ad on your TV, that was Elon,” Talarico said. “If you’ve gotten lies in your mailbox, that was Elon. If you’ve received a text message saying scary things about me, that was Elon too.”

The Texas Democrat contrasted Paxton’s reliance on Musk with his own campaign receiving funding from over 1.3 million individual donors.

“Ken Paxton is funded by one dude,” Talarico said. “Elon Musk wants our land, he wants our water, he wants his very own personal United States senator. He is trying to buy Texas. But on November 3, we are going to send a crystal-clear message… Texas is not for sale.”

Talarico’s remarks on Musk came amid a historic surge of early voting in the Texas Democratic stronghold of Harris County.

According to a Monday report from Click 2 Houston, Harris County recorded nearly 105,000 ballots cast on the first day of early voting, shattering the previous first-day early voting record of 63,000 votes set during the 2018 midterm elections.

In 2018, Democrat Beto O’Rourke came within two-and-a-half percentage points of ousting incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the closest a Democrat has come to winning a US Senate race in the Lone Star State in decades.

The most recent polls aggregated by elections analyst Nate Silver show that Talarico holds a narrow lead over Paxton heading into the final stretch of the campaign.

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