Major layoffs at Fair Fight, Voting Rights Group founded by Stacey Abrams

Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams, is laying off most of its staff and scaling back its efforts in response to mounting debts created by lawsuits.

Lauren Groh-Wargo, who led the organization before stepping down to lead Ms. Abrams' second failed bid to become governor in Georgia in 2022, said she was returning as interim director to lead the cuts, including laying off 20 employees – or 75 percent of the workforce. the current staff.

She added that Fair Fight was $2.5 million in debt with only $1.9 million cash on hand. Fair fight raised approximately $100 million between 2018 and 2021.

The cuts, according to a decision by the group's board, would decimate a prominent liberal group that was once a fundraising powerhouse for Democrats. The news was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Fair Fight has been involved in protracted legal battles over voting rights — for example, against a right-wing group, True the Vote, which in 2020 attempted to purge some 250,000 registered voters in Georgia from the voter rolls ahead of the runoff elections . two seats in the state Senate. A federal court narrowly ruled in favor of True the Vote this month.

Fair Fight lost another lawsuit against the state of Georgia in early 2023 after claiming that restrictions on voter registration and absentee ballots violated voting rights. The group was ordered to pay more than $231,000 to cover the state's legal costs.

Ms. Abrams, once considered one of the country's most influential Democrats, founded Fair Fight after losing her first bid for governor against Brian Kemp in 2018, but has not been involved with the group recently. Her efforts to build a Democratic infrastructure in Georgia and boost turnout among the state's people of color culminated in Democrats flipping both Senate seats on January 6, 2021.

Ms. Abrams subsequently lost her rematch against Mr. Kemp in 2022, and liberal grassroots organizers and activist groups in Georgia, including Fair Fight, warned late last year that national financial support for their efforts had dried up before the 2024 election.