A Texas Democrat political action committee has fired an organizer caught on undercover video describing $25 payments to people willing to attend a one-hour anti-Republican Zoom class as "a roundabout way of paying people for their votes." Texas Majority PAC fired Sky McAdams, its organizing manager, after an undercover video from Townhall Media showed him describing the payment scheme in detail, the outlet reported Thursday.
A PAC spokesperson told Blaze News that "participants in the program are being paid for grassroots organizing work" and that "the way it was described by one rogue employee is factually incorrect, not how we operate, and they were immediately fired." In an undercover video obtained by Townhall Media, McAdams outlined the legally questionable effort. Texas Majority PAC supports Democratic candidates, including U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico.
McAdams claimed the payments are part of a “paid relational program” run by Relentless, a firm that designs and runs scaled relational organizing programs for political campaigns. “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 is heard saying in the video.
“So it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially.” While he noted that direct payments for votes are illegal, McAdams added that the program is legally ambiguous. “You can’t be like, ‘Here’s $25, go vote for me,’” he said.
“You can say, ‘Attend a one-hour class and you can receive $25.’ And then the class just talks about the importance of … It’s a little gray.” Acknowledging the partisan nature of the effort, McAdams said, “If I was a Republican, I would be pissed.”