Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, a man widely hailed as a world leader in the fight to combat climate change, has doled out nearly 7 times as much cash to Republican campaigns and political committees this election cycle as he has to Democratic ones.
Since the start of 2017, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has personally contributed $88,900 to Republicans, while he gave those on the other side of the aisle $13,300, according to a HuffPost review of Federal Election Commission data.
Musk came under fire this week after Salon first reported that he’d donated $38,900 to Protect the House, a GOP political action committee focused on maintaining Republican control of the House. The June contributions puts him among the PAC’s top 50 donors.
But filings show Musk also gave $50,000 to a joint fundraising committee run by his friend House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). From this $50,000 donation, McCarthy’s committee sent $39,600 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, $5,000 to McCarthy’s leadership PAC Majority Committee and $5,400 to McCarthy’s campaign.
McCarthy, a climate change skeptic with a dismal 3 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, joined other Republicans last year in applauding President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the historic Paris climate accord.
On the flip side, Musk gave $10,800 to Sen. Diane Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) re-election bid late last year. (That is technically twice the legal contribution limit, and Feinstein will have to refund $5,400 of Musk’s money.) And in March, he donated $2,500 to the Democratic Midterm Victory Fund, the PAC of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, which, according to its website, is working to “elect Democrats to Congress who will stand up for those Americans left out and left behind by Donald Trump and the Republican Majority in Congress.”
In addition to Musk’s personal contributions, SpaceX’s political action committee has donated extensively to members of both parties this cycle. On the Republican side are some of Congress’ most prominent deniers of climate science, including Sens. Jim Inhofe (Okla.) and Ted Cruz (Texas), who received $2,500 and $3,500, respectively. The campaign committee of Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the outgoing chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology who has argued that pumping the atmosphere full of carbon dioxide is “beneficial” to global trade, crop production and the lushness of the planet, received $1,000.