The campaign of former Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams owes more than $1,000,000 to vendors, Lauren Groh-Wargo, former Abrams campaign manager, told Axios.
After raising over $100 million, the Stacey Abrams campaign is facing enormous debt, after cutting employee pay at the end of the election, according to Axios.
“She was running a campaign where there’s always been more money in the future that can fix the mistakes of the past,” Georgia Democratic operative Chris Huttman told Axios.
The campaign had to cut its ad spending from $2-$3 million in October to $825,000 in the last week of the campaign, according to Axios.
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“Of course, I would have loved to do a lot of things differently,” Groh-Wargo told Axios. “But I had to move as fast as possible.”
The majority of the campaign’s 180 full-time staff were given little notice that their pay would be cut off one week after the election.
Brian Kemp’s campaign staff was paid through November, plus bonuses. Staff for both Herschel Walker and Sen. Raphael Warnock are being paid through December, according to campaign officials.
“People have told me they have no idea how they’re going to pay their rent in January,” one former staffer told Axios. “It was more than unfortunate. It was messed up.”
Abrams also ran out of money during her 2018 campaign, according to Georgia Politics.
But Groh-Wargo told Axios that comparisons to 2018 are “uninformed” given the differences in the campaigns, including a competitive primary and a better climate for Democrats in 2018.