Stacey Abrams' liberal voting rights group lays off most staffers

Stacey Abrams' liberal voting rights group Fair Fight is laying off most of its staffers and reducing its operations in response to increasing legal debts.

Lauren Groh-Wargo, who led the group until she stepped down to run Abrams' second unsuccessful Georgia gubernatorial run in 2022, said she would return to the organization as interim chief executive to direct the cuts, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Fair Fight is laying off 75% of its current staffers, or 20 employees, per Groh-Wargo, as the group is $2.5 million in debt with $1.9 million cash on hand even after raising about $100 million from 2018 to 2021.

The group has been involved in multiple long, unsuccessful legal battles over voting rights. In 2022, news emerged that Fair Fight had reportedly spent more than $25 million in legal fees over two years, with most of that going to the firm of Abrams' close friend and campaign chair, Allegra Lawrence-Hardy.

In one high-profile legal battle, the organization fought the conservative group True the Vote, which sought to remove hundreds of thousands of voters before the 2021 Senate runoffs. True the Vote narrowly won in federal court this month.

Abrams founded Fair Fight after losing to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in 2018, although she has not been involved in the group as of late.

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