Despite millions of dollars being spent in the US midterm elections to influence voters' choices, the money failed to have the desired impact or deliver the expected results. The political defeat suffered by Republicans in Congress also dealt a setback to billionaire Elon Musk, the largest donor to their campaign.
Democrats seized control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives on Tuesday, securing victories in races in which conservative groups poured in far more money than their liberal rivals.
"This may be the biggest defeat for political money in US history," wrote Logan Phillips, founder of the election forecasting website Race to the White House, on X.
Musk, meanwhile, responded sarcastically on X: "Looks like the space lasers I used to interfere with the election didn't work this time."
According to OpenSecrets, an organization that tracks campaign finance, Musk poured nearly half a billion dollars into supporting Republicans, making him the largest individual donor in an election cycle since 2010.
That year, the US Supreme Court ruled that political spending by corporations, unions and other independent entities could not be restricted, opening the door to massive campaign contributions, sometimes without disclosure of their sources.
Musk spent more than $200 million backing Ken Paxton, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Texas, who lost to James Talarico. Talarico thus became the first Democrat to win statewide office in Texas since 1994.
"In this race, we took on our titans: the richest man in the world, the most powerful man in the world, and the entire political establishment in Washington," Talarico said.
He also took aim at billionaires "who own social media algorithms, television news networks, and politicians," and "want us to remain locked in constant conflict."
In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown defeated Republican Jon Husted in the country's second-most expensive election race, with spending exceeding $500 million.
In Georgia, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms won the governorship, defeating billionaire healthcare entrepreneur Rick Jackson, who spent more than $200 million of his personal fortune on his campaign, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy lost the Ohio gubernatorial race to Democrat Amy Acton, despite spending around $36 million of his own money.
Money from the artificial intelligence industry also failed to deliver the desired results.
In South Carolina, American Mission, the Republican arm of the Leading the Future network, backed by OpenAI President Greg Brockman and investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, spent around $2.7 million supporting candidate Darlene Graham, who lost to Democrat Annie Andrews in a state Trump had won by an 18-point margin.
Democrats, for their part, also received support from billionaires.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent $80 million on House and Senate races and gubernatorial contests, then added another $36 million in the final days of the campaign, according to Politico.
"Money is not the deciding factor, but it helps," his political adviser Howard Wolfson told CNN, pointing to the Republicans' advantage in this regard.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn's co-founder, who contributed $11.5 million to the political committee supporting Talarico, called for money to be kept out of politics.
"At a time when people like Elon are spending enormous sums to keep authoritarian clowns in power, those who believe in American ideals cannot give up," he wrote on X.
In California, a proposed one-time 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires in the state appeared to have failed after several of its wealthiest residents spent hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat it.
