The midterm elections are a month away and the candidate pool has never been more WIRED. Races are being run—and likely decided—on Silicon Valley funding, data center debates, AI regulation, extremism, and more. From the contests that will decide the Senate to less attention-grabbing ones that will decide who controls voting in key swing states in 2028,  these are the candidates and races we think are most worth watching closely in the weeks to come, and which we’ll be keeping an eye on.

WHAT MAKES THIS A WIRED RACE: DOGE, Musk, America PAC, AI lobby

Former America PAC lawyer Chris Gober is running to represent Texas’ newly gerrymandered 10th district. Gober served as counsel for the Texas Republican congressional delegation for the 2025 redistricting effort that saw a new, gerrymandered map created for the 2026 midterms—one that was meant to create five new Republican congressional districts.

In addition to representing Musk’s PAC, Gober’s law firm, Lex Politica, has also represented Elevate New Mexico, a limited liability company that ran an advertising campaign supporting a controversial data center project in the state, as well as the Danube Institute USA, a think tank aligned with Hungary’s former right-wing leader Viktor Orban.

According to reporting from The New York Times, Gober was one of several lawyers who advised on the structure of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the weeks leading up to President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The 10th district also includes Grimes County, where SpaceXAI and Tesla have said they plan to open a 100-million-square-foot “terafab” facility to manufacture semiconductors. In addition to his legal work, Gober’s LinkedIn lists him as general counsel for a lobbying group called Maven Advocacy Partners, the client base of which includes several defense tech startups. (Its name appears to be a reference to the Department of War’s Project Maven, which is supported by tech companies like Palantir and Anduril.) Gober also appears to run another company called Maven Defense Solutions. Both the company and the lobbying group share an address with his law firm, Lex Politica, and his campaign office.

Gober’s campaign has received $747,550 from the American Mission PAC, a right-leaning super PAC that has itself received funding from Leading the Future, a PAC focused on promoting AI-friendly candidates and policies. Leading the Future has raised over $140 million from Silicon Valley billionaires like OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, as well as the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.