NY Times: “The story of the political transformation of Cameron County, a majority-Hispanic border community at the southernmost tip of Texas, began with the arrival of a billionaire.
His name wasn’t Donald J. Trump. It was Elon Musk.
More than a decade ago, Mr. Musk brought his private space company, SpaceX, to Cameron County, where the blasts from his rocket testing and launching site on Boca Chica Beach rattle homes for miles. His mark is now everywhere. And his face, too.
Downtown, in the county seat of Brownsville, the old culture — part Mexican, part American, part Tejano — clashes with the new: Images of space, astronauts and Mr. Musk adorn buildings that date to the early 1900s, blocks from the southern border. Along the Gulf Coast marshes on the road to his Starbase launch site, a giant bust of Mr. Musk keeps watch over Cameron County’s nearly 430,000 residents and the occasional wayward hog, the world’s richest man honored like a king in one of the poorest counties in America.
Such a tribute would be a mere curiosity were it not for what happened here on Nov. 5.”