EGN NEWS DESK
Fair Fight, the liberal voting rights group based by Stacey Abrams, is shedding most of its employees and scaling again its efforts in response to mounting money owed incurred by court docket battles.
Lauren Groh-Wargo, who led the group earlier than stepping all the way down to handle Ms. Abrams’s second unsuccessful run for governor in Georgia in 2022, stated she was returning as interim chief govt to guide the cuts, together with shedding 20 staff — or 75 p.c of the present employees.
She added that Fair Fight was $2.5 million in debt with solely $1.9 million money available. Fair Fight raised some $100 million from 2018 to 2021.
The cuts, in a call made by the group’s board, would decimate a distinguished liberal group that was as soon as a fund-raising powerhouse for Democrats. The information was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Fair Fight has been concerned in drawn-out authorized battles over voting rights — for instance, in opposition to a right-wing group, True the Vote, that sought in 2020 to take away some 250,000 registered voters in Georgia from voter rolls forward of runoff elections for the state’s two Senate seats. A federal court docket dominated narrowly in favor of True the Vote this month.
Fair Fight misplaced one other court docket battle in opposition to the state of Georgia in early 2023, having claimed that restrictions on voter registration and absentee ballots violated voting rights. The group was ordered to pay greater than $231,000 to cowl the state’s authorized charges.
Ms. Abrams, at one level thought-about one of many nation’s most influential Democrats, based Fair Fight after dropping her first run for governor in opposition to Brian Kemp in 2018, however has not lately been concerned with the group. Her efforts at constructing Democratic infrastructure in Georgia and driving voter turnout among the many state’s individuals of colour culminated in Democrats’ flipping each of Georgia’s Senate seats on Jan. 6, 2021.
Ms. Abrams then misplaced her rematch in opposition to Mr. Kemp in 2022, and liberal grass-roots organizers and activist teams in Georgia, together with Fair Fight, warned late final 12 months that nationwide monetary assist for his or her efforts had dried up forward of the 2024 election.
