As Elon Musk Moved to the Right, His Businesses Moved to Texas

 

As Elon Musk Moved to the Right, His Businesses Moved to Texas

 

The billionaire has rapidly transformed parts of the state, shocking even development-friendly officials: “It was like, ‘Voilà, Elon is here.’”

 

J. David Goodman

By J. David Goodman

Reporting from Bastrop, Texas, outside of Austin, and from Brownsville and Boca Chica, on the Gulf Coast near the border with Mexico.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/us/texas-elon-musk.html?searchResultPosition=10

Published Nov. 19, 2024

Updated Nov. 23, 2024, 1:07 a.m. ET

 

Elon Musk had long been drifting away from the political culture of California, railing against its regulations and pandemic-era lockdowns. So, four years ago, he decided to move to Texas, eager to embrace its wide-open business culture and be embraced by its Republican leaders.

 

Since then, Mr. Musk and his companies have spread across Texas with accelerating speed, transforming ranches into factories outside of Austin, using coastal lands as a launch site for space travel near Brownsville and turning farms outside Corpus Christi into what will soon be the state’s first lithium refinery, for his electric cars.

 

The headquarters of X is moving to Texas. Mr. Musk's largest factory for Tesla vehicles arrived in 2022, east of Austin. His tunneling company, the Boring Company, has its own small bedroom community of mobile homes and is testing its technology with a pair of tunnels under a farm road outside the city of Bastrop.

 

Mr. Musk has done more than simply move businesses from a blue state to a red state. His growing presence in Texas has been part of a high-profile political transformation — from a Democratic electric car evangelist to perhaps the most significant backer of President-elect Donald J. Trump — that could help further expand his businesses in the state.

 

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Musk funded almost entirely on his own a ground-game effort to elect Mr. Trump that cost more than $175 million. Since the election, Mr. Musk, a major federal government contractor, has been a prominent adviser to Mr. Trump on cabinet selections, and was himself selected to help lead efforts to reduce federal regulations and spending.

 

Not only has Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, been cheering him on, but so has Mr. Trump, who has already expressed enthusiasm for Mr. Musk’s efforts in the state and what he has rejected in Democratic-controlled California.

 

“The Californians I know who moved to Texas are even extra Texan marinated in Texas sauce,” Mr. Musk wrote on X a day after the election. “For the love of God, please don’t let Texas become California.”

 

On Tuesday, the president-elect traveled to Brownsville to join Mr. Musk for the latest launch of his company SpaceX’s powerful rocket system, Starship. The launches, which are regulated by the federal government, have been criticized for their effect on the surrounding coastal wildlife, and for blocking access to the Boca Chica public beach.

 

“For some people, it’s unforgivable,” said Eddie Treviño Jr., the top official in Cameron County, seated in his office in Brownsville. But, he added, “the pros outweigh the cons.”

 

Bit by bit, Mr. Musk has transformed parts of Texas so quickly, even by the standards of the development-friendly state, that it has taken many locals by surprise. His companies share little about their plans in advance, and do little in the way of community outreach. None of them agreed to discuss their Texas operations with The New York Times.

 

“The narrative that we operate free of, or in defiance of, environmental regulation is demonstrably false,” SpaceX said in a statement in September, adding that the company was “committed to minimizing impact and enhancing the surrounding environment where possible.”

 

The desire for speed has led to some friction. In and around Brownsville, some longtime residents complain that the rapid expansion of SpaceX has been damaging the environment, endangering protected animal species and contributing to rising housing costs in an area long known as one of the most affordable in Texas.

 

Similar complaints about unchecked growth have greeted the Boring Company and SpaceX’s factory in Bastrop County, a conservative rural community that has long resisted the influence of nearby Austin.

 

“I really don’t want to see this growth — this is not the Bastrop we wanted,” said Mel Hamner, an outgoing Republican county commissioner.

 

His incoming replacement, Butch Carmack, also a Republican, nodded in agreement. “We moved here for the small town,” he said, wearing a shirt with the logo of Twin Liquors, where he works as a manager. “It’s not a small town anymore.”

 

But other local officials in Bastrop and Cameron Counties said the arrival of Mr. Musk’s companies had been a boon for jobs and growth, placing their often overlooked communities on the map. And residents have appeared mostly supportive.

 

“I think it’s great,” said Armando Morales, 38, who lives in Bastrop and drives an Uber in Austin. “I’m for it as long as he’s responsible with the environment.”

 

In Brownsville, a border city along the Gulf of Mexico, a redevelopment of the historic downtown coincided with the expansion of SpaceX. The Musk Foundation committed about $10 million to the effort, Mayor John Cowen said. New hotels and coffee shops have opened. Murals feature space themes and, in one, a smiling Mr. Musk.

 

“It’s a win-win,” the mayor said. “We have two French restaurants downtown now.”

 

Mr. Treviño agreed: “We’ve been looking and fighting and striving for better-paying jobs for generations.”

 

Though rarely seen out in Brownsville, Mr. Musk keeps a home in Cameron County and voted there on Election Day. He has been building a family compound in Austin, according to people familiar with his plans. (Mr. Musk has denied having such plans.)

 

But recently, it has been Bastrop County that has seen the most rapid expansion of Mr. Musk’s presence.

 

Situated along the winding Colorado River east of Austin, the county and town of the same name have been among the last places to see the spread of development from the state capital.

 

Entities affiliated with Mr. Musk quietly bought up hundreds of acres of land, and building began about three years ago, locals said. Now the area is humming with activity: The Boring Company operates there, and SpaceX has been manufacturing its Starlink satellite-internet kits in a giant building, which is in the process of roughly doubling its size.

 

A combination company store, lunch counter, barbershop and bar that is open to the public — the Boring Bodega — provides a small community space for those willing to drive 15 minutes from downtown Bastrop. On a recent afternoon, several women played Mahjong at a table near a group of young men eating lunch in Boring company shirts. Outside, children played on a small playground. A pickleball court sat unused.

 

“It was just farmland out there,” said Becki Womble, the Bastrop chamber of commerce president. “Then all of a sudden it was like, ‘Voilà, Elon is here.’”

 

The swift development of the area alarmed local landowners and sparked a fight over the companies’ disposal of wastewater in the Colorado River.

 

After some public fights, SpaceX reached a deal this year to connect to a wastewater treatment plant in the city of Bastrop and provide $3 million to help pay for the construction of the sewer line, said Sylvia Carrillo, the city manager. The Boring Company was not part of the deal, she said, but could potentially make use of the line via SpaceX.

 

The line would also help serve even more development in the area. Plans submitted to the county in 2022 on land owned by Mr. Musk’s companies proposed construction of a small subdivision of 110 houses, according to copies of the plans obtained by The Times in a freedom of information request.

 

The subdivision, described in the documents as “Project Amazing,” has not yet been approved by the county, officials said. Ms. Carrillo said that in discussions about the development, its potential size ranged up to as many as 1,100 houses.

 

The Boring Company, SpaceX and Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment for this article. An email to the press account for X returned a message saying that it had been blocked.

 

As the growth has continued, including new sand and gravel mines that followed Mr. Musk’s arrival, many of the longtime landowners who geared up for a fight three years ago have since decided to leave.

 

“There’s maybe one or two that are still here,” said Skip Connett, who owns a 32-acre organic farm on the other side of the Colorado River from the SpaceX development. “As his footprint has grown, his plans have grown,” he added of Mr. Musk. “First it was just the Boring Company, and then it was SpaceX, and now it’s X.”

 

Mr. Musk said over the summer that he would relocate the headquarters of X to Texas, and officials in Bastrop have been preparing for what they expect will be the ribbon-cutting on a new office in early December. “They’re gearing up with employees and everything,” Ms. Womble said.

 

“Can’t wait for next year!” Roy Draa, an X executive, said in a post on LinkedIn after meeting with Bastrop officials this month.

 

Matt Walker, a real estate agent in Bastrop, recently gave a presentation about the area to dozens of X employees. So far, Mr. Walker said, the community had not really felt the influence of Mr. Musk’s companies. “They’re on the outskirts, and haven’t really integrated with the rest of Bastrop," he said.

 

That sentiment was a common one in the western-style downtown where, on a recent afternoon, a local band was recording scenes for a music video near a book store opened by the celebrity author Ryan Holiday.

 

“I don’t see an influx of tech dudes; I see more displaced Austinites,” said Mike Kiddoo, a singer in the band. “I don’t see it impacting everything as much as I thought it would.”

 

Local officials have largely embraced the attention, and even if they have not, they have limited power to intervene: Landowners in Texas have broad freedom to develop their own land, particularly outside of city limits.

 

Still, some of Mr. Musk’s ideas have run into road blocks.

 

In Bastrop County, county officials said Mr. Musk had been trying to open a day care and an elementary school, called Ad Astra, on a former horse farm. School officials sought permission for as many as 50 students and teachers, said Mr. Hamner, the outgoing county commissioner, but were rejected because the septic system could accommodate only half that number.

 

No activity was visible during a visit this month. A call and email to the school were not returned.

 

“We have very few regulations here,” Mr. Hamner said. “We have wastewater, we have flood plain, we have culvert regulations. But we enforce them all.”

 

In Cameron County, Mr. Musk has also failed so far to rename the area where SpaceX is, a plan he proposed years ago.

 

“Creating the city of Starbase, Texas,” Mr. Musk wrote on X in 2021, when it was still called Twitter.

 

He has had an easier time creating the physical layout of a de facto company town, and blasting rockets into space, than he has had trying to change the name of the land.

 

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey, which oversees the agency in charge of such names, said the proposal was still pending.

 

Still, SpaceX has effectively taken over the area, about a 40-minute drive from Brownsville along a truck-beaten, two-lane road. Aging ranch homes have been renovated, with Teslas parked in front. Workers stay in silver Airstream trailers lined up one next to another, or in small mobile homes.

 

Nearby, towering over the coastal landscape, rockets are being built.

 

A correction was made on Nov. 20, 2024: An earlier version of this article misstated the location of Tesla’s largest vehicle factory. It is east of Austin, not north.

 

J. David Goodman is the Houston bureau chief for The Times, reporting on Texas and Oklahoma. More about J. David Goodman