Abrams group draws tons of small donations, and a few biggies, to raise $26 million quickly
The voting rights group that Stacey Abrams founded, Fair Fight, has raised more than $26 million since November 2018, with much of it coming from donors who give $10 or $25 at a time.
The group -- which is helping to fund the efforts of Democratic Party groups across the country to make sure people get to vote in November -- said it received more than 50,000 donations in the past few months.
A vast majority of that comes from outside Georgia because Abrams, a former state House Democratic leader and a potential presidential running mate, has national fundraising appeal and machinery.
Staffers talk about the small-dollar donations, as they did when she raised about $27 million -- much of it from tens of thousands of small donors -- when she ran for governor in 2018. She narrowly lost that contest to Brian Kemp, and Fair Fight was formed after the election.
However, there is a legal limit to how much donors can give to a candidate. There are no such limits for organizations such as Fair Fight’s political action committee, so the group has also drawn some big contributions to reach $26 million in such a short time. Below are some of the top donors:
- $5 million from former New York City Mayor and one-time presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg.
- $1.029 million from Karla Jurvetson, a California physician, philanthropist and Democratic megadonor.
- $500,000 from Diana Blank of Montana, a philanthropist and former wife of Arthur Blank, the owner of Atlanta United and the Atlanta Falcons, and a co-founder of Home Depot.
- $500,000 from Oklahoma-based Stacy Schusterman, the chairwoman of Samson Energy, a deepwater drilling company, and a philanthropist.
- $500,000 from the Service Employees International Union.
- $350,000 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.
- $250,000 from Reid Hoffman of California, a billionaire partner in the technology company Greylock Partners and a co-founder of LinkedIn.
- $250,000 from Eric Laufer of New York, the founder of an renewable energy company, Laufer Wind.
- $250,000 from S. Donald Sussman of Florida, a philanthropist and founder of Paloma Funds and a Democratic megadonor.