Zander Mundy was halfway through a archetypal day at his office when he heard the news: billionaire tech magnate Elon Musk was speaking at a nearby school in the town of Folsom, in the US state of Pennsylvania. “When is the richest guy in the world in town?” Mr Mundy recollects thinking to himself. With a population of just under 9,000, Folsom is quite a quiet place. Residents typically restrain themselves from speaking openly about their politics, and political yard signs are very few and far between.

The 21-year-old Mr Mundy, working for a leasing agent at an apartment complex, acknowledges that he wasn’t planning on voting in the November presidential election. But once he saw crowds building – and felt the excitement – he decided to go in, keen to hear from Musk. By the time he left the school, he remembers leaning more towards Trump than towards Harris. “[If] someone like that tells you this is the election that’s going to decide our future, not only who’s president for the next four years but what the world world is going to be like… I think that’s pretty huge,” he told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). “That matters. That’s significant.”

Once known more as a tech magnate than as a political operative, Musk, 53, has, in full public view, invested his time, operational expertise and ample pocketbook into trying to get Trump elected – a rarity among the country’s business elite who conventionally prefer to influence politics from behind the scenes. It’s a tactic that is starkly dissimilar to traditional CEOs, many of whom have been better known for holding exclusive, expensive fundraising dinners or hosting probable donors at lavish homes in the Hamptons. And it’s incited observers to ask questions about Musk’s motivations.

The conventional approach by CEOs is “not out in the public spotlight,” explains Erik Gordon (chair of the entrepreneurship department at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business). But “Musk does it loudly and proudly, and, therefore, perhaps makes himself a lightning rod”. Musk’s Trump-backing political action committee – America PAC – has by now spent more than $119m (£91.6m) this election cycle, according to Open Secrets (a non-profit tracker). Moreover, Musk’s own contributions make him one of the major individual donors in the presidential race, and seemingly play a crucial role in Trump’s door-knocking and ground operation in key swing states in which the campaign hopes to mobilize voters.