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RICHMOND — Virginia has long been the most prominent national testing ground for political rhetoric in odd-year elections, when few other states hold major contests. And Democrats here have targeted Elon Musk and DOGE nonstop ahead of the November elections, capitalizing on the billionaire's polarizing reputation in fundraising emails, billboards, speeches, and in fliers that deride the "extreme Musk-Trump agenda."
Now Musk's value as a political target is as volatile as Tesla stock. He stepped away last week from his role slashing the government and then, this week, engaged in a public and dramatic feud with President Donald Trump.
Democrats are gleeful as they watch the ugly breakup. But they are already debating whether Musk's power as a bogeyman - even as he remains well known and unpopular in polls - will endure beyond Virginia and into the 2026 midterm elections as his tenure in the Trump White House slips further into the rearview mirror.
"If he's not personally overseeing the trashing of federal services, then I'm a little less interested," said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who has been critical of Musk. "There are lots of right-leaning CEOs, and I don't necessarily think of them every morning."
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) agreed, adding that the effectiveness may be "a little peculiar to Virginia, since the cuts have been so obvious in Virginia."
"If your friends and neighbors have been laid off, contracts getting canceled, job corps centers being closed down, that's more the issue than it was Musk that did it, or Trump that did it, or Russell Vought did it," he said, referring to Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The debate is far from settled. Many Democrats believe Musk needs to remain a major target and that Virginia can help clarify whether anti-Musk messages will still work.
"Get the popcorn out," said Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, pointing to the fight between Musk and Trump. "But at the end of the day, DOGE certainly had a really chilling effect on our federal government services and our workforces and we are going to hear a lot about how voters feel about that in Virginia in 2025."
Questions over how best to campaign against Musk make watching which messages work best in the Virginia contests – where Democrats are heavily favored to make gains – all the more important, she said.
The state offers two models of the anti-Musk message, with subtle differences: one that puts Musk at the center and another that focuses more on the impact of DOGE cuts, which were felt more acutely in Northern Virginia and its large federal workforce than almost anywhere else in the country. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.
Abigail Spanberger, a former member of Congress who is the Democrats' nominee for governor here, has chosen to de-emphasize Musk the man and focus more on his impact on the state's economy, referring in an interview with The Washington Post this week to federal workforce disruptions that forecasters at the University of Virginia have said could trigger a recession in Virginia.
"Certainly, Musk is viewed as a villain in much of this, I think, because of the cartoonish nature of the way he's acted," said Spanberger, who is running against GOP gubernatorial nominee Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. "But at the end of the day, these cuts happened under the administration. ... For most Virginians, it's the administration overall and the chaos overall."
Cuts and uncertainty have hit especially hard in Virginia, home to some 320,000 full-time federal workers - more than almost any other state, according to the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at U.Va. While concentrated in Northern Virginia, federal employees and employees of federal contractors are scattered throughout the state and add up to more than 16 percent of Virginia's overall employment, according to the Cooper Center.
The less Musk-centric strategy is more durable but may be less potent outside of Virginia, given that recent polls have shown only about 40 percent of voters hold a positive view of Musk, about 5 percentage points lower than Trump. An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday found about twice as many voters hold a "very unfavorable" of Musk (39 percent) as "very favorable," (20 percent).
Virginia House Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) has leaned harder than Spanberger into the anti-Musk message, setting the tone for Democratic legislative candidates around the state to run against the "Trump/Musk administration." He said this week that his approach will endure, adding that internal polling backs his confidence.
"The things that Elon Musk did and that DOGE did in Virginia are having and have had a devastating impact. And I don't think voters are going to forget just because he now wants to chastise the president on this big bad bill," Scott said. "You will see Elon Musk and the things and the harm that he caused talked about in one way or the other all the way through November."
Using Musk as a foil worked especially well in Wisconsin, where in April, a liberal candidate for the state supreme court defeated a candidate backed by Musk, who used his social media platform and an estimated $25 million to insert himself into the campaign.
Democratic candidates in New Jersey, the only state other than Virginia with a gubernatorial election this year, are also banking on a Musk strategy ahead of next week's primary. Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic front-runner, has warned her GOP opponent will "DOGE New Jersey." But an attack ad from one of her Democratic opponents accuses her of taking money from an "Elon Musk's campaign fund" because a political group affiliated with his company SpaceX supported her in a previous race.
Multiple liberal groups, especially progressives who see Musk as the ultimate oligarch, are also hoping to keep his name alive, but some are tweaking their messaging to focus more on the impacts of his actions.
Indivisible, a group that has held "Musk or Us" town halls and protests at Tesla dealerships, is not marketing Musk's name in its June 14 events around the country, which it is dubbing "No Kings Day."
"The American people do not want to see a government run by billionaires like Musk, for the billionaire class," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who said the anti-oligarchy theme of his "Fighting Oligarchy" tour is still a potent message.
Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin, in a statement, called the 2025 elections and the midterms a referendum on the "Trump-Musk DOGE agenda" and said "Democrats look forward to running against Elon Musk." The committee's senior adviser for messaging, mobilization and strategy, Tim Hogan, said Musk's tenure "was also its own monstrosity and that is something we will continue to hammer on."
Many Republicans are now hoping to avoid the subject. One prominent GOP operative, granted anonymity to avoid annoying his clients, said the break with Trump may help candidates who need to distance themselves from Musk.
Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, has defended the federal workforce cuts as necessary and tried to counter their impact by insisting that the private sector will step in and hire people.
"I have lost a job. I know what it feels like to lose a job, and so we're trying to make sure that everybody has a job if they want one," Earle-Sears told reporters when asked at an event this week whether Musk and his actions are a political liability.
Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, appearing with Earle-Sears, added that he thinks DOGE cuts are popular with Americans, who broadly favor removing "waste, fraud and abuse" from government. "It's going to help us balance the budget," he said. "And it's going to make sure that we have a very strong economy and it is going to make sure that every taxpayer dollar that we collect is actually going to go to a benefit for the American people."