Tesla and SpaceX Shares Fall After Democrats Win Texas Races Despite Musk's Republican Spending

Shares of Tesla and SpaceX fell on Wednesday after Democrats won top Texas races in Tuesday's midterm elections, in which Elon Musk had spent heavily to support Republican candidates. James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate, becoming the first Texas Democrat elected to the Senate since 1988. Gina Hinojosa unseated three-term Gov. Greg Abbott, making her the state's first Democratic governor in more than three decades. Republicans also lost control of both the Senate and the House. The New York Post put the declines at 2.5% for SpaceX and 3.3% for Tesla, while ZeroHedge reported drops of nearly 6% in premarket trading. Musk reportedly spent between $446 million and $474 million on Republicans, including $224 million in Texas, and $158 million of his September money went through the Senate Leadership Fund to back Paxton. Talarico campaigned for tighter data center regulation. Musk joked on X about failed election-interfering space lasers and the appeal of data centers in space. Some Democrats have signaled they may investigate him once they control Congress, the New York Times reported.

The Daily Signal, running Reuters copy, and the New York Post, both right-leaning, frame Musk as a major loser of the night. The Post leads with stock percentages, his roughly $880 billion net worth, the $474 million record, and the data center buildout in Texas, and it quotes his jokes in its headline. The New York Times, on the left, leads with the stock slide and Democrats' antagonism toward Musk, including talk of investigations, and says little about the data center details. Both sides agree on the Texas losses and the market drop. Al Jazeera adds Talarico's victory-speech reference to Musk, and ZeroHedge predicts state-level legal and regulatory action against his companies.