NYT Investigation Reveals Paid Influencer Effort Behind Pro-Talarico TikTok Posts

A New York Times investigation has found that Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico may be boosted by paid influencers, giving him more attention as early voting nears.

The report released last week reveals that there has been a staggering amount of TikTok activity focusing on the Texas Senate race, with most of the attention focused on Talarico.

The New York Times created a snapshot of TikTok activity, collecting posts about the Texas Senate race between Republican Ken Paxton and Talarico. The snapshot showed there were a total of 1,189 posts over 24 hours last month. Among those posts, 70% were found to focus on Talarico in both a positive and negative light, whereas Paxton received only about 30% of the attention from the videos.

Although approximately 70% of posts were made about Talarico, they were not all positive. Some clips posted used Talarico’s past controversial comments, specifically about transgender issues and statements about Christianity. 

Paxton has also engaged in the discussion, with his campaign posting clips from appearances he’s made on news stations criticizing Talarico.  

Meanwhile, Talarico supporters, both from Texas and across the country, have posted commentary, memes, and clips about Talarico. Other Talarico supporters have shifted the attention back to Paxton and his felony indictment and attempted impeachment by Texas lawmakers in 2023. 

However, one of the more interesting twists in the New York Times’ report was that many of the videos posted were made by influencers who do not live in Texas but were instead created by influencers in other states. 

It was also revealed that dozens of accounts on TikTok posting positive clips about Talarico were paid $4 per 1,000 views. 

Talarico’s campaign has said it is not involved with paying content creators for the videos. Instead, a company named Frontier Media has claimed responsibility for the payments, according to The New York Times. 

Talarico’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication. 

The latest report comes after Townhall released an exclusive undercover video showing Sky McAdams, organizing manager for Texas Majority PAC, explaining how the PAC was paying people $25 “in a roundabout way of paying people for their votes.” 

“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 in the undercover video. “So, it’s like a roundabout way of paying people for their votes, essentially.” 

“You can’t pay someone to vote for someone,” McAdams continues. “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 the importance of … it’s a little gray,” he adds. 

The New York Times report also followed Talarico going missing for nearly two weeks, after his campaign said he was hit with a bad case of the flu, which many Republican critics challenged. 

A recent poll conducted by UMass Lowell and YouGov found Paxton and Talarico were tied at 45%, with 7% of respondents saying they were undecided, 2% saying they would vote for Libertarian candidate Ted Brown, and 1% of respondents saying they would not vote. 

Early voting in Texas for the 2026 race begins Oct. 19 and runs through Oct. 30. Election Day is Nov. 3.

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