quote:
Driving down a long empty stretch of Highway 4 in South Texas, there are few indications that this windswept corner of the nation, bound by the Gulf of Mexico and the Rio Grande, is host to more than dense mesquite thickets and the ghosts of the Civil War. The land feels vast, unchanging and decidedly apolitical — bigger than people altogether.

That is, until a break in the brush reveals an enormous gold bust of Elon Musk, staring into the distance.

Then, signs of the political moment are everywhere. U.S. Immigration and Enforcement agents in bullet-proof jackets flag down passing cars at an inland border checkpoint.

A road leading off the highway reads “Mars-a-Lago.” A hundred yards away, bookending an old, black Studebaker parked for-sale in a dusty pullout, murals of Musk’s face and the DOGE Shiba Inu plaster two 30-foot concrete towers.

And finally, rising from the empty salt plains, in the shadow of a towering rocketship and suborbital launch vehicles, sit homes and hangars, office buildings and neighborhood streets. This is Starbase, the soon-to-be newest city in Texas, and Elon Musk’s first company town. The far-flung settlement, populated almost entirely by SpaceX employees and construction workers, is the site of SpaceX’s launchpad for their next-generation of Starship rockets, and home base for humanity’s future colonization of Mars.

“What’s happening here is incredible,” said Kit Frederic, an Oregon resident who bought a nearby plot of undeveloped land recently, enticed by its proximity to space flight. “Someday every state in the union is going to want something like this.”

Right now, this roughly 1.5 square mile community is technically unincorporated Boca Chica Village. But on Saturday, the 200-odd residents — the vast majority of whom are SpaceX employees — will decide whether the land surrounding Musk’s massive rocket launchpad should become its own city: Starbase, Texas. It is an election that the region has been marching toward since December, when several dozen residents submitted a petition to South Texas’ Cameron County asking it to schedule an election that would incorporate Starbase as its own municipality. The move would give SpaceX increased autonomy, virtually its own government, and greater ability to build where and how it wants.

Nearly 2,000 miles from Washington, this election comes at a strange time for Musk. A man who seems to disregard (or “delete”) regulations and systems that do not serve him is now aiming to define ordinances on the most local level, building a new city from the ground up in rural Texas. After a period in which Musk was seen as a shadow president, he will now become the de-facto mayor of his own small town.

But residents of the closest city, Brownsville, population 200,000, a border community just 20 miles away, are not uniformly ready to welcome Mayor Musk as their newest neighbor. Since SpaceX’s arrival in Cameron County a decade earlier, rents have risen nearly 15 percent and access to a nearby beach has been restricted for locals during rocket launches, drawing ire and frustration from residents shut off from their main point of access to recreation along the coast. Musk’s actions at the federal level have led to concern about what an untrammeled Elon would look like in South Texas.

And yet, for months, the outcome of the election has appeared as something of a foregone conclusion. Much of the land within the proposed new city limits belongs to the company. Most of the voters are SpaceX employees. Gunnar Milburn, Space X’s security manager, was listed as the town’s first potential mayor. His name has since been replaced by Robert Peden, a vice president at SpaceX. Two other employees, the engineering manager and the senior director of environmental health and safety, would serve as city commissioners. As is the case nationally, Musk would serve as an unelected overseer.

The election comes at a key moment in the relationship between Musk and Cameron County, and the nation writ large. At the national level, Musk has emerged as one of the least-liked members of the Trump administration, even among Republicans, as his influence in the White House begins to wane. In Cameron County, local elected officials, long supportive of SpaceX’s presence, have begun to draw a firmer line over the powers it should hold. As the hours inch toward election day, local activists and organizers who have been fighting SpaceX for years are attempting a last-ditch effort to sway voters. The measure’s passage could lead to possible land grabs through eminent domain, diminished public beach access and less oversight of the company’s activities. Its failure, meanwhile, would serve as a public black eye for Musk, and an indication of limited support even within his own company.

Its a long read but they go on to highlight how, despite the fact that SpaceX has brought in higher paying jobs, the economic impact isn't enough and try to claim the only positive has been for high end restaurants. The article really tries to drive home how mad people are that they can't access the beach when SpaceX is launching rockets and that is a major sticking point as to why SpaceX is bad for the area despite the fact that without SpaceX they would go back to being one of the poorest counties in Texas

Then they speculate on how poorly Elon will treat the county and the employees who will live in the town. Those poor employees!

LINK

This post was edited on 5/4/25 at 10:04 am