Public records are exposing who was quietly pouring money into the New Georgia Project: radical national dark money networks and out-of-state labor unions with zero stake in Georgia elections. Now a Georgia Senate committee is demanding accountability.
The Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations has recently subpoenaed Stacey Abrams, former campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo, and former New Georgia Project CEO Nsé Ufot. The subpoenas follow a January 2025 consent order in which the New Georgia Project and its affiliated Action Fund admitted to 16 violations of Georgia campaign finance law and agreed to pay a $300,000 fine, the largest such penalty in state history.
The Georgia Ethics Commission found that the groups failed to register and disclose millions of dollars in contributions and expenditures used to support Stacey Abrams' 2018 gubernatorial campaign and other political activities, as required by state law.
Soros Network, Out-of-State Union Among the Funders
Public records and foundation disclosures now show exactly where that money was coming from. George Soros' Open Society Policy Center funneled $850,000 to the New Georgia Project Action Fund in 2022 alone.
Perhaps more striking is the involvement of National Nurses United, a national labor union, which made a $100,000 grant to the New Georgia Project in 2021. Georgia is a right-to-work state, and many of the dues that funded that contribution were collected overwhelmingly from nurses working outside of Georgia, with little to no connection to Georgia's elections or voters.
NNU claims more than 225,000 members nationally, but its Georgia footprint is virtually nonexistent. Georgia's overall union membership rate was just 5.1% in 2025, roughly half the national average of 10.0%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Georgia's right-to-work laws have kept union organizing in the state's healthcare sector minimal, and NNU's own Georgia page offers little more than a single press release about an Atlanta VA rally.
That means the dues money NNU funneled into the New Georgia Project likely came overwhelmingly from nurses in heavily unionized states like California and New York.
NNU has a pattern of directing dues dollars to politically active organizations, including a $100,000 grant to Black Voters Matter, a left-wing voter mobilization outfit funded by national dark money networks, and a $6,000 grant to 350.org, a climate activist organization.
The Investigation
The Senate Special Committee's subpoenas compel Abrams, Groh-Wargo, and Ufot to appear and testify. Abrams has pushed back publicly, calling the hearing "performative" and a "sham" designed to "intimidate and disarm voting rights advocates." She said she would appear "at a mutually agreeable date" rather than the scheduled date. "It is not lost on me that I am being summoned days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted protections for minority voting power," she said.
State Senator Greg Dolezal, who is also a candidate for lieutenant governor, has framed the committee's work as focused on legislative reform and election oversight. Critics have raised questions about selective enforcement, though the consent order and $300,000 fine represent a formal legal admission of wrongdoing by the organizations themselves.
The Senate Special Committee on Investigations is expected to continue gathering testimony in the coming months.
