Sky McAdams, Organizing Manager for Texas Majority PAC, shown in video discussing the $25 Zoom class scheme.Texas PAC's '$25 for a Zoom class' scheme: bribery or grassroots outreach?
Left says
- •The $25 payment compensates participants for their time spent on relational organizing, a widely used tactic where voters reach out to friends and family, not for casting a particular ballot.
- •Texas Majority PAC says the organizer who described the program on hidden camera misrepresented how it actually works and was fired for that mischaracterization, meaning the video reflects one employee's poor phrasing rather than official policy.
- •Paying people for organizing labor, phone-banking, or attending trainings is a long-standing, legal practice distinct from paying someone directly for their vote.
- •The undercover sting was conducted by a conservative media outlet during a competitive Senate race, raising questions about timing and motive rather than settling the legal question of wrongdoing.
Right says
- •The PAC's own organizing manager described the program as 'a roundabout way of paying people for their votes' and called it 'shady' and 'a little gray,' undercutting claims that it's simply grassroots outreach.
- •The $500,000 spent on this program, at $25 per session, could reportedly fund payments to roughly 20,000 people, raising concerns about the scale of a scheme designed to skirt vote-buying laws.
- •Texas Majority PAC is tied to George Soros funding and was already under investigation for bankrolling Democratic lawmakers who fled the state to block a redistricting vote, fitting a pattern of aggressive tactics.
- •Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is also running against Talarico, calls the scheme an attempt to bribe voters, arguing that dressing up vote payments as an educational class doesn't change the underlying intent.
Common Take
High Consensus- Directly paying someone cash in exchange for voting a certain way is illegal under Texas and federal law.
- Texas Majority PAC operated a program called the 'Paid Relational Program' through software called 'Rally,' run by a company called Relentless, paying participants $25 to attend a one-hour Zoom session.
- The organizing manager who described the scheme on camera, Sky McAdams, was fired by the PAC afterward.
- The video was recorded undercover by Townhall and has become a flashpoint in the competitive Texas Senate race between James Talarico and Ken Paxton.
The Arguments
Right argues
The PAC's own organizing manager, in his own words and without prompting, called the program 'a roundabout way of paying people for their votes' and 'shady as f**k,' which is powerful evidence of intent from an insider rather than an outside critic's spin.
Left counters
A single employee's loose, informal characterization of a program does not define its legal structure or official policy, especially when the PAC states his description was inaccurate and terminated him for it.
Left argues
Paying people for organizing labor—phone-banking, canvassing, attending trainings—is a decades-old, legal practice used across the political spectrum, and is legally distinct from paying someone for how they vote.
Right counters
The distinction collapses when the 'training' consists of a one-hour partisan pitch on why to vote a certain way, and the PAC's own staffer admitted the structure exists specifically to functionally pay for votes while staying technically legal.
Right argues
At $25 per session and $500,000 spent, the program could fund payments to roughly 20,000 people, an enormous scale that suggests a systematic vote-buying operation rather than a modest outreach pilot.
Left counters
Scale alone doesn't establish illegality — large voter-contact programs costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are standard in competitive Senate races, and spending volume says nothing about whether the payments were tied to ballot choices.
Left argues
The sting was conducted by a conservative outlet during a competitive Senate race against a candidate opposed by Paxton, who is both the investigating official and Talarico's opponent, raising serious questions about political motive and conflict of interest rather than neutral law enforcement.
Right counters
The motive of the messenger doesn't change the content of the message — the video shows the PAC's own manager describing the scheme in his own words, and Paxton's dual role doesn't make the underlying admission any less real.
Right argues
Texas Majority PAC's Soros funding and prior investigation for bankrolling Democratic lawmakers who fled the state fits a documented pattern of aggressive, boundary-pushing tactics that makes this scheme consistent with the group's broader behavior.
Left counters
Guilt-by-association with funding sources or unrelated past controversies is not evidence that this specific program violates vote-buying law; each allegation should be judged on its own facts, not tied to a broader narrative about the donor.
Challenge Questions
These questions target genuine internal contradictions — meant to provoke honest reflection.
Right asks Left
“If the $25 payment is truly just compensation for organizing labor and unrelated to how someone votes, why does the 'training' specifically instruct participants on why to vote against Republicans rather than simply covering neutral voter-registration logistics?”
Left asks Right
“If Ken Paxton's office is simultaneously prosecuting Talarico's opponent-adjacent PAC while running against Talarico's party in the same election, how can the public trust that this investigation is being pursued as neutral law enforcement rather than campaign strategy?”
Outlier Report
Left Fringe
Progressive activists and groups like Indivisible or MoveOn-aligned organizers who fully defend relational organizing programs as standard practice and dismiss the story as a right-wing smear; roughly 15-20% of the left holds this uncompromising defense position.
Right Fringe
Commentators like Larry O'Connor and outlets amplifying the story purely as 'Democrats caught buying votes' with no nuance about legal distinctions in organizing compensation represent an aggressive framing; roughly 20-25% of the right pushes this maximalist 'proven bribery/fraud' interpretation without acknowledging the legal gray area.
Noise Assessment
High noise ratio - this is a hyper-partisan Senate race story timed for maximum political effect (undercover sting during competitive election), amplified heavily by conservative media as a 'gotcha' moment, while the underlying legal question about relational organizing compensation is more nuanced than either side's talking points suggest to the average voter.
Sources (6)
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday the arrest of seven foreign nationals who allegedly voted illegally in the 2024 presidential election. The seven individuals were indicted by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Texas last week and charged with crimes related to illegal voting activity. "Foreign influence has no place in American elections," Paxton said in a statement. "Today, my office is announcing our efforts to arrest foreigners who attempted to cheat the system and violate our laws that uphold election integrity. I will not tolerate attempts to rig elections and silence the will of American citizens and voters. I will continue to fight to ensure that Texas has free and fair elections."
<img src="https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/undercover-video-shady-as-f-k-scheme-paid-people-to-vote-for-talarico-in-roundabout-way-soros-pac-leader-caught-admitting.jpg?id=67783045&width=1245&height=700&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C107" /><br /><br /><p>The head of a Texas political action committee has been caught on an undercover video apparently admitting how his group was able to pay voters indirectly to vote for the group's candidate for the U.S. Senate.</p><p>The undercover video, shared Wednesday, was recorded <a href="https://townhall.com/news/kyleolson/2026/09/16/texas-dem-operative-dishes-on-shady-as-fk-plan-to-pay-for-votes-undercover-video-shows-n2683016" target="_blank">by Townhall</a> and appeared to show Texas Majority PAC organizing manager Sky McAdams explaining how the scheme worked.</p><p class="pull-quote">'If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, that’s shady as f**k.'</p><p>"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 says, according to the video. "So it’s, like, a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially. Which is interesting."</p><p>While paying voters directly would be illegal, McAdams seemed to admit that his program is "essentially" doing that indirectly.</p><p>"You can’t pay someone to vote for someone," McAdams continues, according to the video. "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, the importance of it. It’s a little gray."</p><p>On the video, McAdams smiles and adds, "If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, that’s shady as f**k."<span></span></p><p>The scheme is called a "paid relational program" that is run through software named "Rally" and operated by a company called "Relentless."</p><p>Texas Majority PAC was under <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/paxton-unleashes-fury-on-soros-backed-group-allegedly-funding-runaway-texas-democrats" target="_blank">investigation</a> for allegedly funding state Democrats who fled Texas in order to block a vote on congressional redistricting. The group is funded in part by billionaire leftist George Soros.</p><p>Townhall posted <a href="https://x.com/townhallcom/status/2100249527303155787" target="_blank">the edited video</a> on social media, where it was widely circulated.</p><p><strong>RELATED: </strong><a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/talarico-amazon-death-worker-misinformation" target="_blank"><strong>James Talarico shamelessly politicizes Amazon worker's tragic death to attack capitalism</strong></a></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube"> <span class="rm-shortcode" style="display: block; padding-top: 56.25%;"></span> </p><p>In response to the video, Texas Attorney General <a href="https://x.com/KenPaxtonTX/status/2100273483292803505" target="_blank">Ken Paxton</a>, Talarico's Republican opponent, said, "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."</p><p>A Texas Majority PAC spokesperson told Blaze News that McAdams had misrepresented the program and has since been fired.</p><p>"Participants in the program are being paid for grassroots organizing work," the spokesman added in a statement. "The way it was described by one rogue employee is factually incorrect, not how we operate, and they were immediately fired."</p><p>Blaze News' requests for comment from Relentless and the Talarico campaign were not returned in time for publication.</p><p>Relentless claims on its website that it netted "47,533 Democratic votes" in other campaigns in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania in 2024.</p><p>The Texas Majority PAC said in financial disclosures that it had spent $500,000 on services from Relentless. Townhall noted hypothetically that at $25 per vote, that sum could net about 20,000 ballots.</p><p>AG Paxton also oversaw the investigation into Texas Majority PAC.</p><p><em><em>Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. </em></em><a href="https://www.theblaze.com/newsletters/theblaze-articlelink" target="_self"><em>Sign up here</em></a><em><em>!</em></em></p>
<p>The operative: "If I was a Republican, I would be pissed. I would be like, 'That’s shady as f**k.'"</p> The post <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/09/texas-democrat-caught-on-video-explaining-25-program-to-influence-voters/">Texas Democrat Caught on Video Explaining $25 Program to Influence Voters</a> first appeared on <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com">Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion</a>.
On this full episode of LARRY with Larry O'Connor, we discuss the BREAKING EXCLUSIVE NEWS that the James Talarico’s Texas Majority PAC was caught on hidden camera describing the ‘shady’ plan to pay for votes, FBI Director Kash Patel going SCORCHED EARTH on senate Democrats, the Lindsay Clancy holdout juror’s identity, Democrats releasing criminals back onto the streets,, and MUCH, much more! Raise your hand as a Social Security voter: https://AARP.org/SocialSecurityVoter Join the Angel Guild today by visiting https://angel.com/LO to unlock exclusive access to the series now streaming on Angel. Visit https://besthotgrill.com!
On this full episode of LARRY with Larry O'Connor, we discuss the BREAKING EXCLUSIVE NEWS that the James Talarico’s Texas Majority PAC was caught on hidden camera describing the ‘shady’ plan to pay for votes, FBI Director Kash Patel going SCORCHED EARTH on senate Democrats, the Lindsay Clancy holdout juror’s identity, Democrats releasing criminals back onto the streets,, and MUCH, much more! Raise your hand as a Social Security voter: https://AARP.org/SocialSecurityVoter Join the Angel Guild today by visiting https://angel.com/LO to unlock exclusive access to the series now streaming on Angel. Visit https://besthotgrill.com!