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An undercover video this week captured an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC admitting what many suspected: the group paid people $25 to attend an hour‑long online class and called it “a roundabout way of paying people for their votes.” If you needed proof that modern political operatives prefer clever euphemisms to old‑fashioned honesty, this clip delivers it in plain English.
The video and the admission
In the recording, Sky McAdams — identified as an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC — explains the program tied to a vendor called Relentless and its Rally platform. He says participants get $25 to join a one‑hour Zoom training and are then asked to talk to friends and family about voting. The PAC reportedly paid roughly $500,000 to Relentless in July for a “relational organizing program.” At $25 per contact, that math suggests tens of thousands of paid interactions. The PAC later said the operative mischaracterized the effort and that he was fired. Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately amplified the clip and called for accountability, calling it vote‑buying in plain terms.
Legal gray area or plain bribery?
Here’s the simple rule: paying someone to cast a specific vote is illegal. Paying someone to do bona fide organizing work can be lawful. The problem is intent and practice. If the $25 is truly compensation for grassroots work, fine. If it’s a thinly veiled incentive designed to produce votes for a particular candidate, that crosses the line into vote‑buying. McAdams’ own words — “a roundabout way of paying people for their votes” — make the question worse, not better. That “little gray” area looks a lot like a neon sign that says “investigate me.”
Political fallout: quick, loud and very predictable
Republicans are already weaponizing the clip, and Democrats are doing the usual: deny, distance and hope the story dies. But this isn’t just campaign theater. In a tight Senate race, tens of thousands of paid outreach contacts could move margins. Whether the scheme was illegal will depend on contracts, training materials and whether payments were conditioned on votes. Those documents should be produced quickly. If the party of transparency won’t show them, the Department of Justice or state election officials ought to ask the hard questions.
Bottom line: voters deserve clean elections, not creative bookkeeping that dresses up paid persuasion as “training.” This clip shows political operatives testing the limits of the law and public trust. Call it sloppy, call it cynical, call it what it is — and then demand proof. If campaigns want to persuade voters, do it honestly. If they want to pay for votes, they should at least stop pretending it’s something nobler.
