Elon Musk has donated $2 million to the Texas-based Judicial Fairness PAC, making him the latest billionaire to back the group trying to unseat Democratic judges across the state.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO鈥檚 donation 鈥� made through his revocable trust 鈥� makes up almost half of the nearly $4.6 million the Judicial Fairness PAC raised between late September and Oct. 26, according to the group鈥檚 latest campaign finance report due Monday.
Representatives for Musk at Tesla and SpaceX did not immediately respond to a 四虎影院 request for comment. 四虎影院 reached out to Musk鈥檚 wealth manager on LinkedIn to request comment and will update this story with any response.
The Judicial Fairness PAC raised $8.3 million in its previous filing period thanks to funding from some other notable billionaires and corporations, 四虎影院 recently reported.
The Judicial Fairness PAC has poured thousands of dollars into advertising for Republican judicial candidates and against Democratic judges across Texas. In North Texas, the PAC claims Democrats in Dallas are letting out dangerous criminals on little or no bail, while Republican judges in Fort Worth keep crime down by keeping offenders in jail.
But the group fails to tie the difference in the cities' crime levels directly to judges as opposed to other factors 鈥� such as geographic size, demographics and policing.
The group is also formally endorsing intermediate appellate court justices and candidates in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Corpus Christi 鈥� not magistrate or trial court judges who make decisions about bail.
A spokesperson for the Judicial Fairness PAC said the group is 鈥渉ighlighting the devastating consequences that soft-on-crime Democrat judges up and down the ballot have had on families.鈥�
The group has also spent hundreds of thousands to help the Stop Houston Murders PAC with its advertising, according to campaign finance records. That group has not endorsed any specific judges or judicial candidates, but it
With Tesla鈥檚 headquarters in Austin and a SpaceX launch facility in Brownsville, Musk made his interest in Texas politics clear most recently by . The group champions tort reform 鈥� an effort to make it harder to sue businesses 鈥� and has primarily endorsed Republicans in state legislative and judicial races.
Lee Parsley is the campaign treasurer for both TLR PAC and the Judicial Fairness PAC, and TLR PAC gave $500,000 to the Judicial Fairness PAC in the most recent campaign finance filing period.
Donations like Musk鈥檚 could be motivated less by a concern over crime in Texas鈥� major cities and more by a desire to protect corporate business interests with a more Republican and conservative judicial climate, said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
鈥淔or most of these business people, they are not particularly interested in some purse snatcher or auto thief in Dallas,鈥� Jillson said. 鈥淭hey're worried about the regulatory environment for water and air and how oil and gas wells need to be capped in order to be environmentally safe and things like that.鈥�
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