James Talarico’s campaign messaging has focussed on billionaires’ influence on politics. Credit: Eli Hartman / Frederic LeGrand

Elon Musk inadvertently gave Democrat James Talarico’s U.S. Senate campaign a boost this week by deciding to publicly spar with the former San Antonio public school teacher.

The feud began on Wednesday, when the bloviating billionaire fired off tweets calling Talarico “creepy” and adding that there’s “something very wrong” with the candidate.​ In one tweet, the SpaceX and Tesla kingpin even falsely claimed that Talarico, a former Presbyterian seminarian, was going to kidnap kids and force them to undergo gender-transition surgery.

Talarico fired back with a tweet of his own.

“There is something deeply wrong with a political system that allows one trillionaire to buy his own personal U.S. Senator,” the Austin-based state rep wrote.

Musk has pumped nearly $190 million into the U.S. Senate race in a bid to prop up the flagging campaign of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Talarico’s Republican opponent.

“Ken Paxton is funded by one dude,” Talarico said during a rally in North Texas this week, reported on by the Houston Chronicle.

Musk has a vested interest in the outcome of Texas’ tight U.S. Senate race.

Over recent years, the Musk has relocated some of his key businesses, including X, the very platform on which he sparred with Talarico. The tech mogul is even trying to buy a state park in Cameron County to use for SpaceX, which is now headquartered in South Texas.

However, for all the money and tweets Musk fires off to discredit Talarico, his obsesession with putting his thumb on the electoral scale just serves to back up a central thesis of the Democrat’s campaign.

Talarico’s message since the beginning has been about uniting working Texans against the billionaires, who are trying to divide and conquer the nation.

“The only minority destroying America is the billionaires,” Talarico said during a CNN Town Hall earlier this month.

Although Musk probably thought his jabs would hurt Talarico, they bolster the credibility of one of the Democrat’s core campaign messages.

Early voting continues through Oct. 30. Polls will reopen on Election Day, Nov. 3.

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Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...