Elon Musk has fired back after Texas’s incoming governor moved to halt a state park land sale near his SpaceX rocket facility.
Gina Hinojosa, who defeated Republican Greg Abbott by 7 points last week, called the head of the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department on Thursday to “request that no action be taken” on the possible Boca Chica State Park deal while she prepares to take office in January, she told reporters in Austin that day. State parks commissioners had been scheduled to discuss the sale that same day, but the item was pulled from the agenda at her request.
“It is such an important resource,” she said.
Later that day, Hinojosa, who grew up in South Texas, doubled down in an interview.
“Selling our beach to Elon Musk is just something that is almost unimaginable,” she said.
“We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms,” Hinojosa added. “It cannot be just running over the people of Texas, and that’s what changes now that I will be governor.”
Musk didn’t call out Hinojosa by name, but he took to X to defend why his companies chose Texas in the first place.
“SpaceX and Tesla have prospered in Texas, because we were not constantly operating under an oppressive and extractive state government,” he wrote.
“As California became increasingly difficult, due to extreme taxes and overregulation, we moved our major domestic expansions and HQ to Texas,” he added.
The land in question spans about 1,300 acres of public property in Cameron County, directly adjacent to SpaceX’s Starbase, the company’s main site for building and launching its Starship rockets. Hinojosa criticized the potential land deal throughout her campaign, saying she visited Boca Chica Beach regularly as a child.
Texas Monthly first reported last month that the state was weighing a sale with SpaceX as the buyer, though Abbott later said no deal would come up for a vote anytime soon.
Musk relocated to Texas roughly six years ago and later moved the headquarters of both Tesla and SpaceX to the state, a major economic win that Abbott regularly pointed to as proof that the state’s business-friendly approach worked. Tesla’s Austin gigafactory alone employs more than 20,000 workers, making it one of the largest private employers in the region.
The Boca Chica move comes as investors weigh what a Democratic-led Texas could mean for Musk’s businesses. Shares of his companies have slipped since election night, and on Thursday, during a broad market selloff, Tesla fell nearly 11% and SpaceX dropped 9%.
Hinojosa’s targeting of Musk comes as the tech mogul has also been a major political player. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars backing Republicans in Texas and across the country during the midterms.
Hinojosa takes office in January.