Elon Musk Wants To Buy Another Election

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a knack for leveraging himself into the media spotlight, and barely one month into the New Year he has already hit the trifecta of sex, politics, and more sex. The sex bookends are of interest because they layer another double whammy onto Tesla’s ongoing brand reputation crisis. With politics in the middle, they could also upend Musk’s foray into the race for US Senate in Kentucky, where an all-out brawl has erupted among Republicans vying for an open slot this year.

Why Kentucky?

The open seat is due to the retirement of longtime Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who has served since 1985. It provides Musk with another opportunity to put his personal stamp on the federal government, as if he hasn’t stamped on it enough already.

Another Republican is virtually guaranteed replace McConnell in deep red Kentucky. A nominee will materialize when Republican voters cast their ballots in the primary election, and Musk is determined to have a hand in the matter.

Somewhat oddly, though, Musk declined to support either of the two front-runners among Republican candidates vying for the nomination. According to a January 19 report by the Kentucky news organization Courier-Journal, Musk has donated $10 million to a PAC backing Nate Morris, who currently sits in third place in the crowded race.

The Courier–Journal notes that most polls favor the two candidates ahead of Morris. They are former Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron and US Representative Andy Barr, both of whom have the advantage of name recognition. Cameron was also the Republican nominee for governor in the 2023 election cycle.

Money Down The Drain

Fans of three-dimensional chess could make the case that Musk actually wants Morris to fail. After all, 2025 is a lot different than 2024, when Musk bankrolled US President Trump and other Republican candidates into office. The public mood has soured on both Musk and the Republican party since those heady days of the 2024 election cycle, as reflected in Tesla’s declining sales figures and recent elections, too.

A case in point is last spring’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin. Musk dropped a cool $20 million in support of Republican candidate Brad Schimel, who could have won by a squeaker if it was 2024. Trump won the state by 1 point that year. However, this being 2025, Democratic candidate Susan Crawford sailed into office by 10 points over Schimel. Political analysts attribute the 11-point spread partly to a reaction against Musk’s role in the Trump administration.

Then there’s the race for New Jersey governor last year. While Musk did not have a public-facing role in New Jersey, his position as head of Trump’s “DOGE” office provided Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill with a juicy opportunity to pummel Republican hopefuls throughout the election cycle. Sherrill cruised to an easy victory in November over Republican rival Jack Ciattarelli, upending predictions that the race would come down to the wire.

“Of particular note from the exit polls was that three-quarters of voters had made up their minds by the end of September and Sherrill was their clear choice, especially given how close the candidates were in election season polls,” NJ Spotlight News reported on November 10.

The Grok Effect

Of course, a more straightforward explanation for Musk’s $10 million bet on the Kentucky race is that Musk wants Morris to win. However, that’s going to be an even tougher row to hoe, considering the two sex-related episodes that bubbled up in January.

At the beginning of the month, Musk’s already-raunchy X (formerly Twitter) social media site got even raunchier, after a Bloomberg reporter noticed revealed that X users can undress images of non-consenting people — mainly women as well as girls — at the click of a button with the gleeful assistance of Musk’s AI chatbot Grok.

On January 22, the Center for Countering Digital Hate ran the numbers under the headline, “Grok floods X with sexualized images of women and children.”

“Grok produced an estimated 3 million sexualized images including 23,000 of children,” CCDH emphasized.

Although the initial media uproar quieted down somewhat by the end of the month, a bipartisan group of 35 state attorneys has reportedly launched an effort to stop Musk from enabling his chatbot to generate non-consensual sexualized images.

No word yet on whether or not Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman is part of the effort, but the topic is certainly of interest to him, particularly in regards to social media. On January 27 Coleman, a Republican, announced that a federal court has upheld a new Kentucky state law requiring registered child sex offenders to use their full names on social media.

The Jeffrey Epstein Effect

In light of the Grok scandal, Coleman’s focus on sex offenders does not bode well for Morris or any other candidate for office upon whom Musk has lavished his generous support, and now here comes the Epstein scandal to add more fuel to the fire.

Musk’s name first surfaced in connection with the late sex offender Jeffery Epstein last July, when Musk took it upon himself to demand release of the full FBI files recording Epstein’s activities leading up to his 2019 death in jail under somewhat mysterious circumstances.

That demand turned out to be a case of irony in action. Evidence of contact between Musk and Epstein soon emerged, though the record was slim and spotty, suggesting a merely circumstantial relationship at best. Musk dismissed the matter out of hand, and it was soon forgotten in the crush of the news cycle.

That changed last week when the US Department of Justice finally released a new tranche of Epstein files containing details about his contacts with high profile men about town, including Musk.

NBC News reporter David Ingram was among those to pile on. “The records include at least 16 emails between Musk and Epstein in 2012 and 2013, including multiple instances where Musk expressed interest in visiting Epstein’s Caribbean island, which has since become notorious as an alleged location for Epstein’s abuse of women and girls,” Ingram wrote.

As for whether or not Musk manages to keep his reputation, and that of his EV company, from sinking farther in the public eye, that depends partly on the Senate race in Kentucky. If Cameron, Barr, and the other Republicans vying to fill McConnell’s seat decide they can make political hay out of Musk’s support for Morris, break out the popcorn.

Image: Tesla CEO Elon Musk is putting his millions behind US Senate hopeful Nate Morris, who hopes to win the Republican nomination on his way to the November 2026 general election (by Zach Shahan via CleanTechnica archives).