This article proposes and tests a theory to explain the incentives behind the political engagement of bureaucrats in the developing world. The argument is simple: voter‐facing bureaucrats that implement popular and salient policies accumulate electoral capital among poor voters, either due to good performance or political capture. This makes them the target of political recruitment by rent-seeking incumbents , which offer them patronage in exchange for electoral mobilization. We show empirical evidence of this practice with administrative data on 55,000 bureaucrats that interviewed households for admission in Brazil’s Bolsa Família in 2009-12, the largest cash transfers program in the world. Using a regression discontinuity design in close mayoral elections, we present three main findings: (i) incumbent parties recruit more bureaucrats than the opposition for their partisan networks. This pattern is stronger (ii) for bureaucrats that deliver salient, popular policies; and (iii) where voters can effortlessly associate the incumbent party with the creation of the policy.