Leaving DOGE Behind, Elon Musk Is About to Become Mayor of His Own City in Texas

In a move that blurs the lines between tech empire and political sovereignty, Elon Musk is on the verge of securing control over his own city in Texas—a place aptly named Starbase. While the billionaire has long been associated with transforming Texas into a futuristic industrial hub through ventures like SpaceX and Tesla, this Saturday marks a potentially historic turning point.

The small South Texas coastal patch that houses SpaceX’s rocket facility is now up for a vote to become a full-fledged city, one likely to be governed directly or indirectly by Musk himself. The implications extend beyond corporate expansion—this is the emergence of a modern company town under the direction of one of the most controversial figures in American capitalism.

Starbase is not just another speculative venture or a buzzword plucked from Musk’s sci-fi rhetoric. It is a geographic and political realignment.

The proposed area spans just 1.5 square miles near the Texas-Mexico border and includes few streets, a scattering of Airstream trailers, and humble homes left over from Boca Chica’s past as a sleepy beachside outpost. That sleepy past is about to be upended. More than 200 of the 283 eligible voters—many of them Musk’s own employees—have already cast early ballots.

The polling station itself sits on Memes Street, a wink to Musk’s online persona and his ownership of X, formerly Twitter.

Should the vote pass, which now seems all but inevitable, Starbase will officially exist, granting Musk not just operational control, but civic authority. This vote comes at a precarious time for Musk.

Tesla’s profits have nosedived, public confidence has wavered since his alignment with Trump-era fiscal hawks, and his recent political escapades—including a failed $20 million intervention in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election—have diluted his once-celebrated innovator status. With Starbase, Musk is retreating from abstract ideology into something more concrete: a literal city under his influence.

The rationale for Starbase, at least from SpaceX’s limited public statements, revolves around operational efficiency and strategic control. Rocket launches from the site often necessitate closing down Highway 4 and restricting public access to Boca Chica Beach and the adjoining state park. Currently, these closures require coordination with Cameron County, a process SpaceX deems cumbersome.

New legislation under review in the Texas statehouse would transfer beach closure authority from the county to the new city—a convenient development for a company rapidly expanding its launch cadence from five to a proposed 25 annually.

This acceleration aligns with SpaceX’s multi-billion-dollar contracts with NASA and the Department of Defense, as well as Musk’s long-touted vision of using the Starship rocket to return humans to the moon and eventually colonize Mars. SpaceX executives argue that a streamlined governance structure, anchored in the city of Starbase, is essential to these grand ambitions.

As SpaceX Vice President Sheila McCorkle emphasized to lawmakers, “This fully reusable rocket system keeps the U.S. ahead of global competitors like China, and it's being developed right here in South Texas.”

The tone of McCorkle’s statement is not just strategic; it’s nationalistic. Starbase isn’t simply a convenience for SpaceX—it’s positioned as a critical node in America’s space race. The company claims to have poured over $4 billion into the region, creating thousands of jobs and revitalizing a neglected part of Texas. But beneath the patriotic veneer lies a more contentious reality.

Critics argue that Starbase represents corporate overreach on a scale that undermines public rights and sets a dangerous precedent for privatized governance.

At the heart of the controversy is Boca Chica Beach, historically dubbed the "poor people's beach" for its accessibility to working-class Texans. With the creation of Starbase and the accompanying shift in legal authority, access to this beloved coastline could fall under Musk’s purview.

A bill circulating in the Texas Legislature would make it a misdemeanor punishable by up to 180 days in jail for failing to comply with a beach evacuation order—an order that, in the near future, could be issued not by elected county officials, but by Musk’s own municipal government.

Opposition has grown more vocal in recent weeks. At a state hearing, dozens of SpaceX engineers and employees submitted nearly identical statements defending the proposed laws as necessary for public safety and the efficient expansion of Texas’s aerospace industry. But local environmentalists and civil liberty advocates see something far more dystopian.

Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, has led protests against the city vote and beach closure laws. “We’ve been sounding the alarm about Musk and SpaceX for many years,” she told reporters. “Now that the rest of the country is starting to listen, it feels like we’re finally being heard.”

The group attempted a grassroots campaign around the SpaceX compound to encourage eligible voters to reject the city proposal. According to Hinojosa, SpaceX’s private security forced them off the premises.

The optics of a billionaire silencing protestors while constructing his own jurisdiction only adds fuel to critics’ concerns that Starbase is less about exploration and more about control.

Still, economic realities complicate the narrative. Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. acknowledged SpaceX’s contributions to the local economy, calling it “a strong economic driver in our region, one of which we are extremely proud.” Yet, even he expressed reservations about the legislation that would transfer beach control.

“We believe that this bill does not serve the public interest and has received an overwhelmingly negative response from our local community,” Treviño wrote to state lawmakers.

In a rare setback for Musk, a Texas House panel recently rejected the beach control transfer bill. But with the city vote poised to pass, and state-level lobbying intensifying, the billionaire’s quest for autonomous territory is far from over. Even if legislation stalls, Musk will soon preside over a city built in his image, a tangible foothold for ambitions that blend industrial supremacy with personal dominion.

This is no longer just about rockets or cars or social media platforms. With Starbase, Musk is entering a new domain—the realm of civic engineering.

By shaping laws, infrastructure, and even who gets to swim in the Gulf, he’s crafting a modern-day company town that operates as both a launchpad and a fortress. And unlike his whimsical flirtation with cryptocurrencies like DOGE, this endeavor has legal consequences, geographic borders, and a voter base—however small—bound by allegiance to their employer.

If the vote goes through as expected, Elon Musk will, in effect, become the mayor of Starbase, Texas. While his name may not appear on any ballot, his imprint will be everywhere—from beach closures to street names, from rocket schedules to security patrols. And in this new age of billionaire governance, perhaps the most startling revelation isn’t that Musk wants a city—but that no one has stopped him from building one.