Inside Elon Musk’s hands-on push to win 800,000 voters for Trump

In weekly meetings, consultants and vendors for a super political-action committee updated him on their progress toward the discussed goal of turning out 800,000 people to vote for Donald Trump in battleground states. They proposed a budget of about $160 million they would need for the task, most of it to come from Musk himself, and talked about raising an army of more than 6,000 canvassers and other workers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Then, less than three months after launching the effort, Musk signed off on firing most of the vendors, only for the super PAC to rehire one of them after the resulting chaos. He also replaced the Texas-based advisers who helped him get the group off the ground with veterans of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential bid.

America PAC, Musk’s first major foray into presidential politics, is less pioneering than, say, putting people on Mars or implanting microchips in their brains. But the billionaire’s full-throated support for Trump and the GOP has ignited other prominent donors. He has also received the gratitude of the Republican presidential nominee, who faces a newly energized opponent in Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk is tackling the election effort in his signature hands on, chaos-be-damned style, echoing his 2022 takeover of Twitter and early efforts to meet Tesla’s production goals. Whether he and the team he has assembled succeed could be an important part of the election puzzle, and some Republican political operatives said they fear the early stumbles could be costly for the Trump campaign.

The recent overhaul means America PAC, formed in May, is resetting about a month before early voting starts and fewer than 90 days before the presidential election.

But the super PAC’s new leadership is confident it can execute the group’s mandate and the Trump camp has expressed support for the recent changes. “The New Program 100% better than the old gang. Solidly support this effort!" Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump adviser, posted on X last month.

Musk is scheduled to interview Trump on X on Monday night.

Texas roots

Musk started America PAC with the help of Richard Weekley, a Texas real-estate developer and Republican donor who had steered an earlier super PAC focused on voter registration in the Lone Star state, according to people familiar with the matter.

Another early adviser was Denis Calabrese, a Republican consultant who is Weekley’s longtime collaborator, the people said.

Weekley and Calabrese guided Musk toward In Field Strategies, a national political canvassing group, to be the PAC’s boots on the ground, and Raconteur Media to handle its digital marketing, including its website, texting campaigns and voter mailings. They also recruited Michael Baselice, an Austin-based pollster.

In mid-April, Musk met with the firms and advisers in Texas to share his vision for the PAC and ask for a proposed budget, according to people familiar with the meeting. He said he wanted to create a red wave of voters.

The political operatives described an estimated 800,000 low-propensity voters who could be nudged into getting to the polls and said that the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee needed a better ground game, the people said. Musk also wanted the consultants to convince unregistered voters in the swing states to register.

The subsequent weekly Friday meetings were businesslike. Musk said more than once that “bad news must be repeated before good news," according to people familiar with his comment. He wanted details: What was the script for the door-knockers? Could they record some of the interactions?

Musk initially didn’t want to be seen as the face of the group, according to people familiar with the matter.

Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, a longtime Musk ally who was among the first to join with Musk on the PAC, told potential donors that they needed to give only enough to help the group cover initial expenses after which a mystery donor—who turned out to be Musk—would finance the rest, said people familiar with the conversations.

Several other associates of Musk, including Antonio Gracias, a former Tesla director and current SpaceX board member, investor Kenneth Howery, and Sequoia Capital partners Shaun Maguire and Doug Leone, cut checks of $500,000 or $1 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Musk’s involvement in the PAC came to light on July 12. Bloomberg reported that Musk donated an unknown amount to the PAC.

The next day, Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa. After the shooting, Musk posted on X, “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery," publicly formalizing his support for the former president.

The announcement was heartily embraced by the Trump camp. “I love Elon Musk! He endorsed me. He’s great," Trump said in July and August fundraising emails.

But the extent of Musk’s commitment to getting Trump elected was kept under wraps. Musk had emphasized to the group his desire for privacy, according to people familiar with the super PAC. He was angered by a Wall Street Journal report a couple of days after his endorsement that revealed that he told others he had plans to commit around $45 million a month to the group, the people said. He later said on X that he is donating at a lower level.

Former DeSantis team takes over

By mid-July, the PAC had several new faces, including Generra Peck and Phil Cox, veterans of the presidential campaign and super PAC that supported DeSantis, who bowed out of the race in January.

Their relationship with Musk is traced to DeSantis’s successful 2022 gubernatorial re-election campaign. Peck, DeSantis’s campaign manager, had courted the billionaire’s support. Cox was a senior adviser to the campaign. Peck also managed DeSantis’s presidential campaign and helped map out a super PAC called Never Back Down, set up in large part to focus on field operations.

But the campaign burned through cash quickly, forcing Never Back Down to divert resources to cover the campaign on the airwaves, according to former DeSantis campaign and PAC officials. DeSantis replaced Peck as his campaign manager in August 2023.

Cox, who is now a business partner of Peck, was a key adviser to the DeSantis super PAC, ultimately overseeing its budget, field and turnout operation.

Soon after Cox and Peck arrived at America PAC, most of the group’s vendors received an email notifying them that they were fired and thanking them for their efforts.

Weekley, the Texas businessman, and his political strategist Calabrese, left along with the canvassing and digital firms—In Field Strategies and Raconteur Media—that represented the lion’s share of the super PAC’s spending.

In Field Strategies told the group’s leadership that it had helped register more than 4,000 people, knocked on 725,000 doors, had 150,000 substantive conversations with prospective voters and got 26,000 absentee commitments, according to people familiar with data it provided to the PAC.

Raconteur Media, meanwhile, had compiled voter registration forms for 8,500 people from swing states who provided their information on the PAC website, these people said.

The committee paid In Field and Raconteur Media a total of about $20 million from June 12 to July 19, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Calabrese and Raconteur Media have a controversial history of working together, according to separate lawsuits filed by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation against Calabrese and Raconteur Media. Calabrese is the former president of the foundation, which was co-founded by John Arnold, a former energy trader and hedge-fund manager who has become a prominent Houston philanthropist along with his wife.

The lawsuits alleged that after being alerted by federal authorities to possible wrongdoing, the foundation discovered that Calabrese hired Raconteur Media and other vendors at inflated prices and that they in turn paid him millions of dollars in kickbacks.

Calabrese pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 2019 and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was later ordered to pay more than $8 million in damages as a result of the Arnolds’ civil suit and was released from the judgment after paying back the foundation. The Arnolds’ lawsuit against Raconteur Media was settled out of court.

Not hyperpartisan, Musk says

Musk discussed founding America PAC in a July 22 interview with psychologist and author Jordan Peterson. Musk said he created the committee after concluding that the Republican Party was more aligned with his beliefs in meritocracy and free speech than the Democratic Party.

“It’s not meant to be sort of a hyperpartisan PAC," Musk told Peterson. “The intent is to promote the principles that made America great in the first place."

The group’s filings with the Federal Election Commission state that its expenditures are in support of the Trump campaign.

America PAC has replaced In Field strategies with firms that include Blitz Canvassing, which is part of communications and public affairs company GP3 Partners, according to people familiar with the move.

Push Digital, based in Charleston, S.C., and IMGE, also part of GP3 Partners, took over from Raconteur Media, said the people. Cox is the founder of GP3 Partners and chairman of IMGE, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Since the former vendors were fired, the PAC’s advertisements on Facebook and Instagram have stopped running. Social-media accounts for the PAC haven’t been updated since July 17.

The turnover at the PAC was followed by online glitches and complaints from election officials in swing states that the website was collecting personal info without helping people register to vote.

A Journal review found that people from the swing states were asked for personal information and then directed to a page asking to fill in yet another form. But broken code on the page prevented the form from appearing in all cases except for visitors from North Carolina.

The website draws people in with digital ads. America PAC spent $899,458 on Facebook and Instagram ads between July 8 and July 23, according to data from Meta Platforms’s Ad Library.

Some ads feature a photo taken immediately after the assassination attempt on Trump. Those ads started running on July 16, three days after the shooting.

The website was never meant to register voters online, said people familiar with the website. In swing states, information provided by website visitors is used by the PAC to fill out voter registration forms, which are then supposed to be mailed to the prospective voters to sign and drop back in the mail. But Raconteur Media was fired before it mailed the 8,500 voter registration forms it had compiled.

Earlier this month, America PAC rehired Raconteur Media to mail out voter registration forms and patch up the website.

Brian Whitton, Patience Haggin and Brad Reagan contributed to this article.

Write to Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com, Joe Palazzolo at Joe.Palazzolo@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com