An undercover video captures a Texas Majority PAC organizing manager openly describing the group's paid Zoom program as a scheme to skirt federal vote-buying laws, and admitting even she would call it "shady" if the other side did it.
Sky MacAdams, an organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, laid out the operation on camera: the group pays people $25 each to sit through a one-hour Zoom class about "why voting is important and why the Republicans are causing all of these bad things." The conservative outlet Townhall published the video on Wednesday, and the footage left little to interpretation, because MacAdams did the interpreting herself.
Federal law prohibits paying someone in exchange for voting or not voting for a particular candidate. Violators face up to two years in prison. MacAdams acknowledged the legal line on camera, and then described exactly how the program walks up to it.
"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.'"
She then offered a blunter summary of the arrangement:
"So it's like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially."
Texas Majority PAC did not build this program in-house. State campaign finance records show the PAC paid $500,000 in May to a political consulting firm called Relentless for its "Relational Organizing Program." Relentless describes the program on its website as one that compensates low-propensity voters "for their time as they reach, persuade, and mobilize their friends and family to vote."
That language matters. The program targets voters who rarely show up at the polls, and pays them cash to attend partisan programming, then encourages them to pull their social circles to the ballot box. Whether that constitutes voter mobilization or vote-buying depends on a legal distinction MacAdams herself called "gray."
Texas Majority PAC has spent more than $2.4 million in 2026 to mobilize voters across statewide, U.S. House, and U.S. Senate races. Representatives for the PAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the video surfaced.
What makes the footage so damaging is not just the description of the program. It is MacAdams's own assessment of how it would look from the outside. She told the undercover interviewer exactly what a Republican would think of the arrangement:
"If I was a Republican, I would be p***ed. I would be like, that's shady as f***."
That is not a critic's characterization. That is the operative running the program, evaluating it by the standard she knows applies, and conceding it fails the smell test.
No federal or state authority has announced an investigation into Texas Majority PAC or MacAdams based on the video. No charges have been filed. But the footage now sits in the public record, with the operative's own words doing more damage than any outside accusation could.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wasted no time connecting the video to his own race. Paxton, who is running for a Texas Senate seat, accused his Democratic challenger, James Talarico, of "doing the same" after the Texas Majority PAC scheme surfaced. Paxton posted the accusation on X. The full text of his post was not available, and Talarico has not been directly tied to the Relentless program in the available reporting.
Talarico had previously called President Trump's proposed $5,000 dividend checks, announced last week at a Republican midterm convention in Dallas, an "election year stunt." Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer went further, accusing Trump of "trying to bribe the American people for their votes."
The contrast now sits in plain view. Democratic leaders spent last week accusing the president of bribing voters with a policy proposal tied to economic performance. Days later, a Democratic PAC operative appeared on camera describing an actual cash-for-attendance program and calling it a "roundabout" way to pay for votes. Schumer and Talarico have not addressed the Texas Majority PAC video.
This is not the first time undercover footage has exposed a gap between what Democratic operatives say publicly and what they admit behind closed doors. In the 2018 Tennessee Senate race, a Project Veritas undercover video released in October showed campaign staffers for Democrat Phil Bredesen admitting his public statement supporting Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation was insincere. That race shifted dramatically, from a statistical tie in early October to a nine-point lead for Republican Marsha Blackburn in the final polls before Election Day. Bredesen himself told MSNBC that if he lost, it would be because of "the failing national Democrat brand."
Whether the Texas Majority PAC video carries the same political weight remains to be seen. But the pattern is familiar: an operative speaking candidly on camera, saying what the organization would never put in a press release.
MacAdams framed the $25 Zoom payments as occupying a legal gray zone. She drew a distinction between handing someone cash and telling them to vote for a specific candidate, which is illegal, and paying them to attend a class that happens to be partisan programming designed to drive turnout.
That distinction may hold up in court. It may not. No legal authority quoted in the available reporting has weighed in on whether the Relentless program crosses the federal line. But the operative's own words suggest she understood the risk. She did not describe the program as clearly lawful. She described it as a workaround, a way to move money to voters without tripping the statute.
The Relentless website's own language reinforces the concern. The firm says it compensates low-propensity voters, not volunteers, not staffers, not consultants. Voters. And it compensates them specifically in connection with mobilizing others to vote. The $500,000 Texas Majority PAC spent on this program was not a small experiment. It was a significant investment in a mechanism that its own operator called "shady."
Federal prosecutors and the Texas Attorney General's office now have a video in which a Democratic operative explains, step by step, how the program works, why it exists, and what she thinks an honest observer would call it. What they do with that is an open question. What MacAdams already told the camera is not.
When the person running the program admits she would call it shady if the other party did it, the rest of us are entitled to take her at her word.
