Musk again targets Kaptur in current race

SANDUSKY — The world's richest man is, once again, trying to defeat U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo. Elon Musk tried to help Republican candidate Derek Merrin in 2024, but Kaptur won a narrow victory. In the current election, essentially a 9th U.S. House District rematch between Kaptur and Merrin, Musk is also spending money to try and help Merrin. A spokeswoman for Kaptur's campaign, Kylie Blitzer, said Musk is trying to buy Kaptur's seat. "Musk and the billionaire class are bankrolling Derek because they know he'll do as he's told. He did it for Larry Householder in Columbus, and now they want to buy him a seat in Congress to do it again in Washington," Blitzer said. Wired, which closely covers technology in the U.S., has set up a website to track spending by Elon Musk's America PAC, citing Federal Election Commission filings. It shows that, as of Oct. 21, Musk has spent about $151,000 to defeat Kaptur. Musk spent about $170,000 in 2024 to aid Merrin. In this year's race, Musk has spent comparable amounts of money in four other U.S. House races in Ohio, including about: • $171,000 to help Republican Bob Latta defeat Democrat Brian Shaver in the 5th District race in a district that includes Huron and Sandusky counties. • $122,000 to help Republican Max Miller against Democrat Brian Poindexter in the 7th District race in the Cleveland area. And Musk's spending to attack Kaptur is only a small part of what he's spending this year. According to the Wired tally, Musk has spent about $9.6 million in Ohio alone, including about $8.9 million to help incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted fend off a challenge from Democrat Sherrod Brown, a former senator. Across the U.S., Musk has spent about $60 million so far to aid Republican candidates for Congress in the midterm elections. Wired's Musk tracker shows that Musk has spent more money attacking Kaptur, about $102,000, than it has trying to promote Merrin, about $49,000. Blitzer said Kaptur has apparently drawn Musk's ire because she represents ordinary people. "Marcy Kaptur has never answered to the wealthy and powerful. She answers to the hardworking families of northwest Ohio. Northwest Ohioans rejected Derek Merrin once, and on Nov. 3, they'll do it again. This seat is not for sale, no matter how desperately Derek tries to sell us out to the highest bidder," Blitzer said. Musk, the subject of a new documentary that's nearly four hours long, is an entrepreneur and businessman best known for his Tesla electric car company, SpaceX rocket and Starlink internet access companies. He worked in the Trump administration early in Trump's second term and succeeded in destroying the United States Agency for International Development, also known as USAID, bragging on his X.com social media platform that he had spent his weekend "feeding USAID into the wood chipper." The destruction of the agency, including its public health programs in Africa, has been blamed for accelerating the spread of Ebola in a new outbreak in Africa which so far has claimed about 2,000 lives. Hey, Grok The Register asked Grok — Elon Musk's artificial intelligence tool, heavily promoted at X.com — whether Musk's elimination of USAID had contributed to deaths in Africa. Grok replied, "Yes, according to numerous public-health experts, former USAID officials, on-the-ground responders, and reporting from outlets including STAT, NPR, Bloomberg and Wired — though the U.S. State Department disputes the degree of impact." Grok added, "There is no precise, independently verified count of 'extra' Ebola deaths solely caused by the USAID changes — outbreak severity also involves conflict, weak local health systems, population movement, lack of a licensed vaccine/specific treatment for Bundibugyo virus, and other factors. "However, the consensus among many former responders and independent reporting is that the sharp reduction in U.S. preparedness funding and on-the-ground capacity contributed to slower detection and a more severe trajectory than would otherwise have been expected."