Voter registration charity once led by Sen. Raphael Warnock is no more following years of internal turmoil
The New Georgia Project, the voter registration charity founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams and once led by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.), is no more, just months after admitting to illegally campaigning for Abrams’s failed 2018 Georgia gubernatorial campaign.
The New Georgia Project admitted in January to violating 16 state laws in 2018 by illegally campaigning in favor of Abrams’s first gubernatorial bid. The group agreed to pay a $300,000 fine after confessing to investing $3.2 million that year to operate at least 10 field offices across the state to engage in direct voter contact in support of Abrams, despite presenting itself to the public as a nonpartisan charitable voter registration group.
Founded by Abrams in 2014 and once touted as “the poster child” of her efforts to boost Democratic voter turnout in Georgia, the New Georgia Project and its affiliated action group announced Thursday that both organizations would be dissolved following several years of internal turmoil, financial struggles, and run-ins with the law.
Since 2020, the two groups have squandered more than $81 million in contributions from major left-wing dark money groups, including the Tides Foundation and the George Soros-bankrolled Center for Popular Democracy. On Thursday, they called for “strong and courageous leaders” to step forward and continue their work of “building a just and truthful world” in a statement announcing their dissolution, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
The New Georgia Project’s troubles have been apparent since before the 2022 midterm elections, when the Washington Free Beacon reported that the groups had suffered a major brain drain with the exodus of half its leadership team and the firing of its former chief financial officer, Randall Frazier, who was terminated in June 2022 after warning the group’s leaders that they were engaged in potential financial impropriety. Instead of heeding Frazier’s plea to hire a forensic accountant to right its ship, the New Georgia Project set out to purchase a sprawling Atlanta compound for $2.45 million in August 2022, just ahead of Abrams’s electoral rematch against incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp (R.).
The New Georgia Project tapped Erin Ferguson, a junior staffer who previously served as a canvasser making $23 per hour, to manage the property acquisition, the Free Beacon reported. The deal ultimately fell through, and in October 2022, the group fired wide swaths of its senior leadership due to a lack of funds. The following month, Abrams lost her 2022 campaign against Kemp in a 7.5-point landslide.
The New Georgia Project was led by Warnock when it engaged in its illegal campaign activity. A spokesman for Warnock, who served as the charity’s chairman in 2018, said in January that the senator had no knowledge of the violations, and that “compliance decisions were not a part of” his work leading the group.
The New Georgia Project’s demise is the latest blemish for Abrams, a prominent election denier who insisted for several years following her 2018 defeat to Kemp that the election was “rigged” and “stolen” from her. Following her loss, Abrams founded another nonprofit group called Fair Fight Action, which sued Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in federal court, alleging he disenfranchised minority voters in the lead-up to the election.
Fair Fight Action paid $9.4 million in legal fees to a law firm run by Abrams’s 2018 campaign chairwoman as part of its case against Raffensperger. But a federal judge ruled in January 2023 that the Abrams group provided no direct evidence that Georgia voters struggled to vote in the 2018 election and ordered it to pay more than $200,000 to reimburse the state’s legal fees.
Abrams’s various electoral and legal defeats served only to bolster her reputation in Democratic circles. In 2022, she was cast as “President of Earth” in an episode of Star Trek: Discovery, and in 2024, she served a “pivotal role” in securing a $2 billion federal grant from the Biden Environmental Protection Agency to Power Forward Communities, a nonprofit group that works to replace gas-powered appliances with electric alternatives in low-income communities. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin terminated that grant in March.
Abrams is reportedly weighing a third bid for Georgia governor in 2026.
