Texas – “Absolutely outrageous! James Talarico’s team just admitted they are trying to bribe people for votes. Texans aren’t for sale, no matter how much James Talarico thinks they are,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a post on X after an undercover video surfaced showing an organizer for Texas Majority PAC describing a $25 payment program as a “roundabout way of paying people for their votes.”
The comments from Paxton, who is the Republican nominee challenging Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, came after Townhall published an undercover video involving Sky McAdams, identified as an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC. The video has since been reported on by several other outlets, including the New York Post, Just The News, Blaze Media and Texas Scorecard. According to the reports, McAdams described a program in which participants are paid $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class focused on the importance of voting and criticism of Republicans.
“We are paying people $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom class to learn why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things,” McAdams said in the video, according to Townhall and other outlets. He then described the arrangement as a “roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially.”
McAdams also acknowledged in the video that directly paying someone to vote for a particular candidate would not be permitted. He described the $25 payment for attending the class as a different arrangement and referred to the legality of the practice as “a little gray.” The program was described as a “paid relational program,” an organizing strategy intended to use personal relationships to encourage people to vote. McAdams said the program was operated by Relentless and used software called Rally.
Campaign-finance records cited by multiple reports show Texas Majority PAC reported a $500,000 payment to Relentless in July for a “relational organizing program.” Townhall and other outlets reported that the expenditure represented roughly 20% of the PAC’s spending at that point. Relentless describes its relational-organizing programs as efforts that recruit lower-propensity voters and compensate them for their time as they reach out to friends and family, persuade them and encourage them to vote. Just The News reported that Relentless has described similar programs conducted in several states during the 2024 election cycle.
The undercover recording quickly became a political issue in the Texas Senate race because Texas Majority PAC supports Democratic candidates, including efforts connected to Talarico. Paxton seized on the video to accuse Talarico’s team of attempting to buy votes.
“Absolutely outrageous!” Paxton wrote on X. “James Talarico’s team just admitted they are trying to bribe people for votes. Texans aren’t for sale, no matter how much James Talarico thinks they are.”
However, the recording itself does not establish that Talarico personally directed the program or that anyone was actually paid in exchange for casting a ballot for him. The payment described by McAdams was characterized in the video as compensation for attending a class, while the PAC has disputed his description of the program.
Texas Majority PAC fired McAdams after the video became public and said he had mischaracterized how the program operates.
“Participants in the program are being paid for grassroots organizing work,” a PAC spokesperson told Texas Scorecard. “The way it was described by one rogue employee is factually incorrect, not how we operate, and they were immediately fired.”
The PAC said participants are hired and compensated for grassroots organizing activities, including attending events, learning how to organize friends and family, encouraging those contacts to vote and sending reminders.
Blaze Media also reported that the Talarico campaign and Relentless had not responded to requests for comment at the time of its report. The controversy has also raised questions about the distinction between paying people for campaign work and paying people specifically for their votes, according to The Express.
Texas law prohibits certain forms of compensation connected to voting activity. The Texas Election Code’s provisions on vote harvesting, for example, make it an offense to knowingly provide compensation or another benefit in exchange for vote-harvesting services. The law defines vote-harvesting services as in-person interaction with voters in the presence of an official ballot or mail ballot that is intended to deliver votes for a particular candidate or measure. That provision, however, does not by itself establish that the $25 program described in the video violated Texas election law. The reports about the program describe payments for attending a Zoom class and organizing voters rather than compensation explicitly conditioned on casting a particular ballot.
The issue nevertheless prompted additional calls for scrutiny. Texas Rep. Pat Fallon called for a federal investigation into Texas Majority PAC, writing to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche and arguing that the allegations warranted investigation. The controversy comes as the Texas Senate race between Paxton and Talarico enters the final stretch before the November election. The contest has attracted substantial outside spending and national attention, with both candidates and their allies seeking to define the other side for voters.
The Texas Tribune previously reported that the Senate candidates have relied heavily on individual donors while outside political committees have also played a significant role in the race. For Paxton, the video provided a new line of attack against Talarico and his political allies, allowing the Republican candidate to frame the $25 program as an attempt to influence voters financially. For Texas Majority PAC, however, the response has been that McAdams inaccurately characterized a legitimate grassroots organizing program and that his employment was terminated after the recording surfaced.
As of the latest reports, there has been no finding by a court or election authority establishing that Talarico or his campaign illegally bought votes. The available reporting centers on McAdams’ statements in the undercover video, the PAC’s $500,000 payment to Relentless, the PAC’s subsequent firing of McAdams and the competing explanations of what participants were actually being paid to do. The dispute is now another flashpoint in the increasingly contentious Texas Senate contest, with Paxton accusing Talarico’s political operation of trying to circumvent election laws while the PAC involved maintains that the program was legitimate grassroots organizing and that the former employee’s description was inaccurate.
