Texas has a new company town after a landslide election Saturday to incorporate Starbase around space tech innovator and rocket builder SpaceX’s testing and launch site in the southern part of the state.
“Now, it is official!” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Sunday along with a video touting the new city.
Starbase was formed in an unincorporated area in Texas’s Cameron County near the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump has renamed the “Gulf of America,” and across the Rio Grande from Mexico. The new city, which measures just under two square miles, is about 20 miles away from Brownsville, the Cameron County seat and home to some 186,000 residents.
Overwhelming, and early, support from residents
The final vote was 212 in favor to 6 against, according to Cameron County elections administrators. About 84 percent of the ballots were cast during the early voting period before Election Day on Saturday.
Nearly all of the 283 people eligible to vote on the incorporation initiative — registered voters residing in the proposed city’s boundaries — are SpaceX employees or relatives of employees, according to an analysis from The Texas Newsroom, a state-based public radio collaboration.
From rocket building to city building
Musk, 53, a billionaire and the world’s richest man who became a key adviser to Trump last fall after spending at least $250 million on his presidential campaign, first publicly floated the idea of Starbase’s incorporation in a post on X in 2021.
SpaceX owns nearly all of the new city’s land including residential dwellings, “with only a few exceptions,” SpaceX Starport Senior Manager Richard Cardile wrote in the city’s incorporation documents.
Along with Starbase’s incorporation, voters on Saturday elected the city’s first government officials: Mayor Bobby Peden, 36; and city commissioners Jordan Buss, 40, and Jenna Petrzelka, 39. All three are SpaceX employees and ran unopposed for the positions.
The Texas Tribune reported last week that little was known about Peden, Buss and Petrzelka ahead of Election Day.
“There have been no signs of a traditional campaign along the Boca Chica Beach region in South Texas, where the proposed town is located about 20 miles east of Brownsville. No yard signs. No campaign websites. No candidate forums,” according to the news site.
But Musk, who led an effort to overhaul the federal government this year through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under Trump, is a resident of and widely expected to have significant sway over the new city.
The history of company towns
Company towns — cities where major employers own most buildings and businesses — have long come together in rural areas centered around production sites. Historically in the U.S., they have sprung up near railroad sites, coal mines, lumber and textile mills and steel plants.
Silicon Valley in California has been regarded as a new, tech-based wave of company towns.
Opponents argue the pitfalls
Some critics have argued that the symbiotic relationship between companies and the residents of “company towns,” can create an abusive environment for workers.
The Center for American Progress (CAP, a left-leaning think tank, warned in 2019 that workers in modern company towns would need “stronger antitrust enforcement and labor protections” to combat potential employer abuses and ensure fair wages, safety and job security for their employees.
“Closer examination of what company towns look like in modern practice reveals that while labor market concentration does negatively affect workers in these areas, in order to address the abuse of labor market power, antitrust policy must be accompanied by labor policy that guarantees workers a safe workplace and livable wages,” CAP researchers wrote in their report.
