Politics
Remarkable Rags-to-Riches Story of Stacey Abrams
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Georgia politician and Democrat activist made a small fortune working most of her career in not- for-profits. BY PAUL SPERRY
y her own admission, sta- cey Abrams has made a number of “personal finan- cial missteps” in her career.
Despite a history marked by bill collectors, tax liens, and ethics inves- tigations, the Georgia politician and Democratic Party activist has man- aged to amass a small fortune — while working most of her career in the not- for-profit sector. 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. Abrams, 51, is probably even better
off than that, thanks to her latest ven- ture: Rewiring America, which uses federal funds to provide low-income people with free electric appliances. The green energy startup hired
Abrams as senior counsel in 2023 after she helped secure federal funding totaling $1.9 billion from the Biden administration’s Environmental Pro- tection Agency, according to a podcast interview she gave last year. Those funds were frozen in March
by the Trump administration while it investigates the grant application and award process along with Congress. It’s just the latest in a string of investigations involving Abrams, who has presidential ambitions, and the nonprofits she’s launched. In March, Georgia lawmakers
42 NEWSMAX | JUNE 2025
announced a special probe into her New Georgia Project and its fundrais- ing arm, which failed to report mil- lions of dollars in contributions and spending tied to Abrams’ first guber- natorial bid. She’s also been accused by eth-
ics watchdogs of personally misus- ing political donations raised for her campaigns. “I’ve always been concerned
about her leveraging public service to enrich herself,” William Perry, who formerly led the Georgia chapter of liberal Common Cause, told Real- ClearInvestigations. 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 state- wide office with more documented cases of ethics violations than Abrams. Although Abrams’ 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 relation- ship between political insiders and government entities that discharge public dollars. Money woes have followed Abrams
— an academic star who was raised in a middle-class home by parents who became ministers — since graduating from Yale Law School in 1999. 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 records reveal. She has seen the IRS file at least two liens on her property. Abrams did not respond to
requests for comment, but she has acknowledged a history of debt and tax problems. In her 2018 memoir, Lead From the
Outside, she lamented: “I’d love to say that I learned my lesson after law school, and that I maintained my per- sonal finances in pristine order. But, alas, I discovered a second way to stumble . . . The allure of available cash, money I should have remitted to the Internal Revenue Service, proved irresistible . . . [W]hen the time came to pay my taxes, I fell behind.” But in the seven years since then,
Abrams has seen a miraculous turn- around in her finances — going from someone with “precious little” to a multimillionaire. And it all happened after she ran unsuccessfully for governor of Geor- gia, first in 2018 and then again in 2022, during which she raised a com- bined $81 million. Most politicians build wealth after
reaching high office, but Abrams did so after losses vaulted her to celebrity
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