{"id":1531165,"date":"2025-04-18T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1531165"},"modified":"2025-04-18T18:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T22:20:00","slug":"the-remarkable-rags-to-riches-story-of-stacey-abrams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-remarkable-rags-to-riches-story-of-stacey-abrams\/1531165\/","title":{"rendered":"The Remarkable Rags-to-Riches Story Of Stacey Abrams"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Remarkable Rags-to-Riches Story Of Stacey Abrams<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations<\/a>,<\/em><\/p>\n

By her own admission, Stacey Abrams has made a number of “personal financial missteps\u201d in her career.<\/strong> Despite a history marked by bill collectors, tax liens, and ethics investigations, the Georgia politician and Democratic Party activist has managed to\u202famass a small fortune<\/strong> \u2013 while working most of her career in the not-for-profit sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Financial records show that when she first entered statewide politics in 2018, she reported a net worth of less than $109,000. By 2022, the last year she had to publicly file a financial report, it had grown to more than $3.2 million. <\/strong>Abrams is probably even better off than that, thanks to her latest venture: Rewiring America, which uses federal funds to provide low-income people with free electric appliances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The green-energy startup hired Abrams as senior counsel in 2023 after she helped secure federal funding for the nonprofit by putting\u202ftogether an umbrella group that applied for and won grants totaling $1.9 billion from the Biden Environmental Protection Agency<\/strong>, according to a podcast interview she\u202fgave last year. Those funds were frozen last month by the Trump administration while it investigates the grant application and award process\u202falong with Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just the latest in a string of investigations involving Abrams, who has presidential ambitions, and nonprofits she\u2019s launched. <\/strong>Last month, Georgia\u202flawmakers announced a special probe into her New Georgia Project and its fundraising arm, which failed to report millions of dollars in contributions\u202fand spending tied to Abrams\u2019 first gubernatorial bid. She’s also been accused by ethics watchdogs of personally misusing political donations raised for her campaigns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been concerned about her leveraging public service to enrich herself<\/strong>,\u201d William Perry, who formerly led the Georgia chapter of liberal\u202fCommon Cause, told RealClearInvestigations. Perry, who developed a thick file on Abrams while investigating money in Georgia politics for 15 years, said he knows of no other candidate for statewide office with more documented\u202fcases of ethics violations than Abrams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although Abrams\u2019 career has been pockmarked by financial problems and ethics investigations, she has never been charged with a crime. Instead, her career illustrates the often cozy and remunerative relationship between political insiders and government entities that discharge public dollars. In previous articles,\u00a0RCI has reported<\/a>\u00a0on the connection between those\u00a0close to the Democratic Party<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Biden administration green energy grants<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Money woes have followed Abrams \u2013 an academic star who was raised in a middle-class home by parents who became ministers \u2013 since graduating from Yale Law School in 1999, <\/strong>even though she started out making $95,000 a year, not\u202fincluding a large signing bonus, with a top corporate law firm in Atlanta.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After running up several credit cards and failing to pay her taxes, Abrams, who has never married and has no children, racked up almost $230,000 in debt, financial\u00a0records<\/a>\u00a0reveal. She has spent\u202fmuch of her adult life fending off bill collectors while repairing her bad credit. Despite working as a tax attorney before launching her decades-long career in government, she has seen the IRS file at least two liens on\u202fher property to recover back taxes and penalties.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ‘Allure of Available Cash’<\/h3>\n

Abrams did not respond to requests for comment, but she has acknowledged a history of debt and tax problems. In her 2018 memoir, \u201cLead from\u202fthe Outside,\u201d she lamented: \u201cI\u2019d love to say that I learned my lesson after law school, and that I maintained my personal finances in pristine order.\u202fBut, alas, I discovered a second way to stumble \u2026 The allure of available cash, money I should have remitted to the Internal Revenue Service,\u202fproved irresistible. \u2026 [W]hen the time came to pay my taxes, I fell behind.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

She wrote that it would take her \u201ca long time\u201d to get out of debt and start building wealth<\/strong>. \u201cOver the years, my income has\u202fgone up and down,\u201d Abrams wrote, \u201cbut I still have precious little in the way of wealth beyond my slowly appreciating house and bare-bones\u202fretirement account.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in the seven years since then, Abrams has seen a miraculous turnaround in her finances \u2013 going from someone with \u201cprecious little\u201d to\u202fa multimillionaire.<\/strong> And it all happened after she ran unsuccessfully for governor of Georgia, first in 2018 and then again in 2022, during which\u202fshe raised a combined $81 million. It\u2019s unusual. Most politicians build wealth after reaching high office, but Abrams did so after losses vaulted her to\u202fcelebrity status, achieved in part by blaming racially discriminatory voter suppression for her loss.<\/p>\n

Tax filings and personal financial disclosures reveal some of her newfound wealth has come from nonprofit organizations she’s started, including\u202fmore than $750,000 through the Southern Economic Advancement Project and at least $427,500 from two New Georgia Project-tied nonprofits,\u202fwhere she worked part-time.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t account for all of it. Income from several book deals \u2013 several works of nonfiction and\u00a0eight \u201cromantic suspense novels\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 also contributed to her wealth. The total value of those contracts is not public, but according to her 2022 disclosure, she owed her publishers advances totaling $800,000 against future royalties. Abrams has been accused of tapping public resources to drum up sales for her books. In 2018, Perry\u2019s government watchdog group\u202ffiled a complaint alleging she used her campaign staff and travel budget to promote her memoir \u201cMinority Leader,\u201d whose publisher gave her a\u202f$150,000 advance,\u202faccording to a personal financial\u202fdisclosure<\/a>\u202fshe filed in her bid for Georgia governor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is illegal for the candidate to utilize campaign contributions and resources to promote and sell the candidate\u2019s book<\/strong>,\u201d wrote Perry, who now heads\u202fGeorgia Ethics Watchdogs, in a\u202fcomplaint<\/a>\u202ffiled with the state\u2019s campaign finance commission. \u201cAnd this is precisely what Abrams has done.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The watchdog, who says he originally supported Abrams as a Democrat, added that at least one Abrams campaign staffer \u201creported travel expenses\u202fthat matched her book tour.” The state ethics commission declined sanctions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perry said Abrams has had “more ethical challenges than any other statewide candidate” for office, including conflicts of interest from lucrative state\u202fcontracts she helped land for a consulting firm she co-founded while she was working on related policies with Georgia\u2019s governor as a state\u202flawmaker. \u201cStacey Abrams was once a public official I liked a lot,\u201d he said, \u201cbut she\u2019s become unethical.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 51-year-old Abrams began her career in government working for the city of Atlanta as an attorney before serving 11 years in the Georgia State Assembly.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the same time she worked for the state, she started a consulting firm, Sage Works LLC, \u201cproviding advice to governmental and nonprofit clients on\u202foperations,\u201d according to her\u202fdisclosures<\/a>.\u00a0Records show she was paid $62,000 in taxpayer money as a consultant on an Atlanta urban redevelopment\u202fproject in 2006 and 2007, which raised ethical red flags.<\/p>\n

Many ‘Mistakes’ in Finances<\/h3>\n

\u201cWhen I left the city of Atlanta to run for office, I had to figure out a way to afford my house and I started a consulting firm,\u201d she explained in an\u202finterview at the time. \u201cThey [city officials] hired me and I negotiated a pretty good price for myself and built a reputation as someone who understood\u202fthe intersection of public and private enterprise when it comes to particularly public-private development.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

While in the assembly, Abrams also supplemented her state salary with more than $150,000 in per diem payments. <\/strong>Such payments are routine. But in 2011, she claimed more out-of-session expenses than any other Georgia House member, Perry pointed out. That same year, she claimed per-diem pay plus mileage for working in\u202fGeorgia on the same day that a lobbyist reported buying her a cab ride out of state in Miami. When confronted with the discrepancy, Abrams said she\u202fmade a mistake and reimbursed the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abrams made so many \u201cmistakes” on her annual state financial\u202fdisclosures<\/a>\u202fshe had to file no fewer than 18 amendments after watchdogs and local\u202fmedia caught major errors and omissions. \u201cAbrams’ reports have to be repeatedly amended,\u201d Perry said. “She apparently forgets about hundreds\u202fof thousands of dollars she’s earned from companies she owns or serves as a partner, or board of directors she has served on.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

She also made \u201cmistakes\u201d in her campaign reports<\/strong>. Perry questioned more than $84,000 she reimbursed herself from her legislative campaign accounts\u202fbetween 2006 and 2017 without providing details or any itemization of what the money was spent on. \u201cThis means she could have pocketed the\u202fmoney, which of course would be illegal,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After he filed an ethics complaint, Abrams promised to disclose where the money went but never\u202fdid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Abrams first ran for governor in 2018, she loaned her campaign $50,000 even though\u202frecords<\/a>\u202fshowed she owed the IRS $54,052.<\/strong> She\u202fclaimed financial hardship for deferring tax payments while working to support her parents, for whom she had bought a new Honda and later a new\u202fhouse in Stone Mountain for $370,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t pay your taxes, but you have the money to run for governor?\u201d Perry said. \u201cShe of course paid herself back [for the campaign loan], <\/strong>and did so\u202fwhile on a payment plan for back taxes with the IRS.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In April 2018, Abrams used campaign resources to promote her book, \u201cMinority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change,\u201d\u202fwhich was released one month before the gubernatorial primary election. She enlisted several paid campaign officials to post a link to the book-purchasing website on Twitter. Her communications director even encouraged her followers to \u201cpre-order your copy today.\u201d Her staff also promoted\u202fher book tour in tweets. Abrams herself pushed sales on her official campaign page on Facebook.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Using campaign contributions to promote the sale of a book for the personal profit of a candidate does not qualify as \u201cordinary or necessary\u202fexpenses\u201d allowed by state law.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Georgia Ethics Watchdogs filed a 13-page complaint with the state ethics commission, Abrams said her campaign did nothing wrong. However, all campaign web pages supporting the sale of the book were suddenly removed, and all the book promotions posted on social media by her campaign staff were deleted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raising more ethics alarms, Abrams appears to have used charitable donations to her nonprofits to fund her political campaigns. A year before she launched her 2018 bid for governor, Abrams founded a fundraising arm for her voter registration nonprofit, New Georgia Project. The state ethics board found that the project and its “action fund” failed to disclose $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in spending\u202fduring the 2018 election cycle on behalf of Abrams’ failed bid for governor. Earlier this year, the organizations agreed to pay a $300,000 fine\u202ffor the violations, prompting dozens of layoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nonprofits\u2019 \u201cprimary purpose was political activity,\u201d and therefore \u201cviolated numerous state laws relating to their political activity,\u201d the Washington-based Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust said in a recent letter<\/a> to the IRS calling for their tax-exempt status to be revoked.\u202f<\/p>\n

Registered as 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofits with the IRS, the groups are prohibited from engaging in campaign activity.<\/strong> A special committee of the Georgia\u202fSenate is investigating whether \u201cdark money\u201d was funneled through Abrams\u2019 nonprofits to her campaign. Meanwhile, the House Ways\u202fand Means Committee has asked the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of the groups. Abrams no longer lists the New Georgia Project on\u202fher personal website.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abrams is also the founder of a host of other liberal nonprofits<\/a>, including: Fair Fight Action, Fair Count, the Southern Economic Advancement Project\u202f, and American Pride Rises APR Network, a national organization dedicated to defending and expanding DEI. Collectively, the nonprofits\u202fhave raised more than $100 million in charitable donations. As 501(c)(3) nonprofits, they are not required to reveal their donors. But in her books, Abrams has\u202fthanked wealthy liberal philanthropists Steve Phillips and Susan Sandler, as well as “the Soros family.\u201d U.S. agencies also fund her organizations\u202fthrough federal grants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abrams resigned from Fair Fight Action\u2019s board before she announced her second run for governor in 2022, but the nonprofit nonetheless acted on\u202fher behalf during the election. Campaign disclosures reveal an in-kind donation \u2013 valued at $542,000 worth of Fair Fight employees\u2019 time \u2013 plus a $1.5\u202fmillion direct donation from Fair Fight to Abrams\u2019 leadership PAC.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Abrams\u202falso appoints members of her family and close friends to lucrative positions at her nonprofits, as well as through\u202fcampaign consulting jobs. Her sister Jeanine Abrams, for one, has earned $182,000 a year in total compensation as president of her Fair Count\u202fnonprofit, which Stacey Abrams founded to make sure communities of color aren\u2019t undercounted in the census, according to its latest IRS filing. And\u202fAbrams\u2019 \u201cdearest friend\u201d and longtime partner Lauren Groh-Wargo has netted $330,000 a year as the CEO of Fair Fight Action, even though the\u202fnonprofit is $2.5 million in debt and has had to lay off about 75% of its staff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an entrepreneur, Abrams has built wealth by founding or co-founding a number of private businesses that have also relied on government contracts.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

She co-founded the financial services firm NOWaccount Corp in 2010 to take advantage of an Obama-era federal jobs program. \u201cI read\u202fthe [Small Business] Jobs Act,\u201d Abrams\u202fsaid<\/a>, and took it back to her partner and said, \u201cHere\u2019s what we can do.\u201d Abrams, in turn, worked with the\u202fObama administration to help her utilize a state lending program the act initiated for minority businesses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Through 2017, NOWaccount took in several million dollars from government programs run by Fulton County and the state of Georgia, funds that were backed by the federal government. Abrams landed the contracts while working for the state and the governor on\u202frelated business.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though she said she “walled myself off” from government decisions tied to the contracts, minutes from a 2014 Fulton County meeting involving her business tell a\u202fdifferent story. They state that she not only personally attended the meeting, but \u201cRepresentative Stacey Abrams appeared in connection with the request for a\u202fletter of inducement for the issuance of $20,000,000 in taxable bonds\u201d to backstop NOWaccount\u2019s transactions and accelerate payments to her\u202fclients. Taxpayer guarantees gave her NOWaccount a substantial boost.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abrams was paid at least $660,000 in salary from NOWaccount, even as her company ran into trouble with the Georgia Department of Community\u202fAffairs<\/strong>. The agency\u202fcomplained\u202fher outfit recommended loan applications for approval of clients with inflated credit scores and who otherwise\u202fwould not have been eligible to receive lines of credit from the state program. All told, taxpayers had to cover more than $1.3 million in defaults connected to her company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another watchdog group, Government Accountability Institute, suspects Abrams actually pocketed millions from the deal, even as taxpayers bailed out her clients, according to a 2022 study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Abrams used the episode as a case study in successful entrepreneurship to help sell her 2022 book, \u201cLevel Up: Rise Above the Hidden Forces Holding Your Business Back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Government contracts also provided the revenue stream for another firm started by Abrams \u2013 Insomnia Consulting, which specializes in writing up\u202freports for the development of government transportation, energy, and water projects. One of her biggest clients was an Eskimo tribe project in Alaska.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Abrams\u2019 latest government-tied venture is perhaps her most controversial \u2013 and could be her most lucrative.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since March 2023, she\u2019s been\u202fworking<\/a>\u202fas senior counsel for Rewiring America, a Washington-based green-energy group that\u2019s backed by a $2 billion EPA grant as part of former President Biden\u2019s climate agenda to \u201cdecarbonize\u201d the country.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The goal is to replace all gas appliances in households\u202fby encouraging homeowners to take advantage of green tax credits, rebates, and other inducements made available through Biden\u2019s Inflation\u202fReduction Act of 2022, which included $27 billion for a Biden initiative called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As part of her contract with Rewiring America, Abrams has\u202ftraveled<\/a>\u202fto communities of color like DeSoto, Ga., to help give away \u201cfree\u201d heat pumps,\u202fheat pump water heaters, and induction stoves to residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She also helped \u201cbuild\u201d an online \u201ccalculator\u201d people have used to find out what\u202fincentives and rebates they qualify for to electrify their homes. She says she\u2019s educating minorities \u201con the losing end of environmental justice\u201d that\u202fthey have access to thousands of dollars waiting for them in an “electric bank account.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As she did with the Obama jobs bill, Abrams studied the Biden legislation and saw opportunity.<\/strong> Although Abrams and legacy media outlets, including the Washington Post and Politifact, have downplayed her role, she was a key player in putting together the coalition, Power Forward Communities, that applied for the\u202f$2 billion grant made available through Biden\u2019s act. Rewiring America is part of that coalition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he other thing that we did, that Stacey and I\u202fhave been working on over the last year and change, is that\u202fwe put together a coalition to apply\u202ffor something called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and we were selected for two billion dollars to really create a way forward for low- and moderate-income households in communities so that every kitchen table is able to participate,\u201d Rewiring America CEO Ari Matusiak said last July while sitting next to Abrams for a Bloomberg\u202fGreen Festival podcast\u202finterview<\/a>\u202fin Seattle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Rewiring America website\u202flists<\/a>\u202fMatusiak, who formerly worked for Obama in the\u202fWhite House, as the\u202f\u201cfounder and co-chair of Power Forward\u202fCommunities, a national coalition awarded $2 billion from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to decarbonize and reinvest in American\u202fhouseholds.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the\u202fpodcast<\/a>, Abrams said that \u201ceven though the Inflation Reduction Act passed in [2022], it has taken time to deploy that much money. Those dollars are\u202fcoming online.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After running for statewide office and helping\u202fBiden win Georgia in 2020, Abrams almost overnight has become a multimillionaire with a 4,100-square-foot home near Emory University valued at more than $1.4 million and more than $727,000 in stocks and bonds.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To hear Abrams, it all came from \u201cleveraging\u201d the private sector in the years after she left the Georgia statehouse. But the record shows she never really disconnected from the public sector and has been mixing her private business with the public interest her entire career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Paul Sperry is an investigative reporter for RealClearInvestigations. He is also a longtime media fellow at Stanford\u2019s Hoover Institution. Sperry was previously the Washington bureau chief for Investor\u2019s Business Daily, and his work has appeared in the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Houston Chronicle, among other major publications.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nFri, 04\/18\/2025 – 14:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/remarkable-rags-riches-story-stacey-abrams<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Remarkable Rags-to-Riches Story Of Stacey Abrams Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations, By her own admission, Stacey Abrams has made a number of “personal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1531166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-6qkd","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/04\/542295-NAyedT.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1531166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}