Elon Musk spent almost half a billion dollars ($474 million) supporting Republican candidates in the midterm election. That didn’t buy him much, according to a November 6 New York Times story, “How Elon Musk Frittered Away Nearly $500 Million on the Midterms.”
The world’s richest person had face-planted — and was now trying to turn back time.
Elon Musk spent nearly half a billion dollars during the midterm cycle, the most in any election period for a donor who wasn’t a candidate himself.
He hoped to defend Republican control of Congress and rescue Ken Paxton, the party’s embattled nominee for Senate in Texas. Instead, Democrats won shockingly large House and Senate majorities, and Mr. Paxton was trounced by James Talarico, who seemed to bother Mr. Musk like no other Democratic candidate.
When the devastating result became clear, Mr. Musk deleted an X post that had encouraged Republicans to turn out, and tried to joke his way out of how badly the night had gone for him. “Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn’t work this time,” he wrote early Wednesday.
The closest Salem has to an Elon Musk is Larry Tokarski, the founder and president of Mountain West Investment Corporation, a development company. Last March Tokarski was given the 2026 Legacy of Leadership Award by the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce.
Tokarski and Mountain West Investment appear to be the biggest backers of conservative and Republican political candidates in Salem. Like Elon Musk, all that money mostly has gone to losing candidates. Here’s a breakdown of the $72,000 total in the May and November 2026 election cycle that somebody sent me.
Betsy for Salem (Betsy Vega, a Ward 6 city council candidate) got $5,000. Vega narrowly defeated incumbent Mai Vang last May, and seems to have survived Vang’s write-in campaign, so that money went to a winning cause.
But the $10,000 that went to Chris Cummings, the Ward 8 city council candidate, didn’t pay off. Cummings did earn a November runoff election against incumbent Micki Varney, since neither got more than 50% in the May election. However, currently Varney is comfortably ahead of Cummings 52-48.
The $5,000 contribution to Deanna Gwyn went to a losing candidate, since Gwyn lost to Dave Inbody in the Ward 4 city council race. The $5,000 that Manny for Salem (Manny Martinez, a Ward 2 city council candidate) got didn’t produce a win against Linda Nishioka, the incumbent.
And the $47,000 contributed to Friends of Julie Hoy went down the political drain when Hoy was trounced by Vanessa Nordyke 56-43. So overall Tokarski and Mountain West Investment backed one conservative winner and four conservative losers.
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