A Democratic operative was caught on undercover video describing what he called a “roundabout way of paying people for their votes” in Texas. Sky McAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, said participants receive $25 to attend a voting-related Zoom class. He acknowledged that directly paying someone to vote would be prohibited and called the arrangement “a little bit creative.” The PAC later disputed his description of the program and announced that he’d been fired.
The footage highlights Texas Majority PAC, a Democratic political group supporting candidates in the state’s closely watched 2026 elections. The group has spent money on voter-mobilization efforts connected to statewide, congressional, and U.S. Senate contests, including the Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The video was obtained and published by the conservative outlet Townhall.
“We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to like learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all these bad things,” McAdams said in the video. He described what he believed the payment accomplished. “So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially, which is interesting,” he said.
As Trending Politics reported, McAdams identified the effort as a paid relational program involving Relentless and its Rally software. When asked what the program was called, McAdams replied, “It’s called the paid relational program. I think Rally Texas is the official name.” The approach involves participants contacting friends and relatives who may be more receptive to someone they already know than to an unfamiliar campaign worker.
McAdams then acknowledged the legal distinction between paying someone to perform political-organizing work and paying that person to vote. “You can’t pay someone to vote for someone. You can’t be like, ‘Here’s $25, go vote for me.’ You can say, ‘Attend a one hour class, and you can receive $25,’ and then the class just talks about like importance of it,” he said. McAdams called the arrangement “a little bit creative” before adding, “If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, that’s shady as f—.”
Relentless describes its paid relational programs as an effort to recruit low-propensity voters and compensate them for persuading and mobilizing people they know. The company says similar programs were used during the 2024 elections in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Relentless claims those efforts produced 47,533 Democratic votes and mobilized more than 30,000 low-propensity voters to contact over 1.2 million friends and relatives.
Watch McAdams describe the program here:
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A campaign-finance report filed in July showed that Texas Majority PAC paid Relentless $500,000 for a relational organizing program. The payment represented roughly 20% of the PAC’s expenditures at that point in the election cycle. The group has reportedly spent more than $2.4 million during 2026 on efforts involving statewide races, congressional contests, and the U.S. Senate election.
Texas Majority PAC pushed back after the video surfaced and said McAdams had misrepresented its work. “The way it was described by one rogue employee is factually incorrect, not how we operate,” a spokesperson told Texas Scorecard. The group said McAdams was immediately fired and maintained that participants are paid for grassroots organizing work, including training, contacting friends and family, and reminding those contacts to vote.
Paxton responded to the footage by accusing Talarico and his Democratic allies of engaging in conduct similar to what Talarico had previously condemned. Talarico had recently called President Donald Trump’s proposal for $5,000 dividend checks an “election year stunt.” Paxton cited that remark after the video surfaced and accused the Democratic PAC involved in the race of using paid Zoom classes as an indirect means of paying voters for their votes.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.