Elon Musk was not alone in voting for President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday in Cameron County, South Texas, which is typically blue. The former Democratic stronghold voted for Trump, who defeated Vice President Kamala Harris by six percentage points.
In the past, this area has been very easy for Democrats to win. In 2016, Trump lost Cameron County, which is the largest county in the Rio Grande Valley, by 32 percentage points. In 2020, he lost it by 13 percentage points.
The latest results in the mostly Hispanic area look more like those in Tarrant County, Texas, which was once called “America’s most conservative large urban county” by the Texas Tribune.
In nearby Starr County, which has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1896, Trump also won.
Now, while Trump is happy about a win for Musk that the billionaire worked hard for (and may have even broken the law to get), Cameron County is wondering what caused the change.
Is Trump’s win in Cameron County a sign of a trend to the right that was going to happen even if Musk’s SpaceX did not work in the county? Or was Musk’s influence what made it happen?
As SpaceX grows, Musk has long wanted to be in charge of the area. Early this year, the Cameron County Spaceport Development Corporation passed a resolution asking that the area where SpaceX works be given the mailing name “Starbase.”
After that, there were plans to make Brownsville into a city with restaurants, a recreation center, and shops.
Musk’s influence in the area began ten years ago, when SpaceX began building its facilities in Boca Chica, Texas. In 2019, the company began putting together its powerful Starship rocket.
In the past few years, people who do not like SpaceX or Musk have called for more oversight, especially when it comes to the environment, since the test flights damage shorebird nests and dump waste into nearby wetlands.
People on the left may not have heard much from candidates about an issue that was important to them after a few launches.
It was mostly ignored by campaigns in the Valley, according to the Texas Observer, that SpaceX was bad for the environment. However, experts say that voters on the left need to feel hopeful for the strategy to work on them.
At the same time, people liked how SpaceX worked in Texas. An event called “ElonDay” was held at a brewery in Brownsville in August to honor Musk and show off a huge bronze bust of him that had been seen in South Texas.
Because it is home to SpaceX’s launch site, the City of Brownsville used to call itself the “Silicon Valley of Space.” During Starship’s test flights, South Texas even gets more attention, with people coming from as far away as Canada and Poland.
So when Republicans put a lot of money into the area during the midterm elections in 2022, voters were open to it. Later, Trump used the promise of bigger things from SpaceX to win over voters.
Trump told a crowd in Reading, Pennsylvania, last month, “We will lead the world in space and reach Mars before the end of my term.” Musk, on the other hand, said that under Harris, that would never happen.
Trump promised voters in the area a lot of things, mostly changes to immigration policy. One promise that may have been the cherry on top for Trump voters was that the country would continue to explore space.
On Wednesday morning, Musk seemed very excited about Trump’s victory in the election for a second term. The CEO put up a picture of Starship on X and wrote, “The future is going to be great.”