A nonprofit founded by Stacey Abrams, a Georgia Democrat, admitted on Wednesday that it had violated state law by concealing the fact that it had campaigned for her during her 2018 run for governor.
At the time of that campaign, the group was led by Raphael Warnock, who was later elected to the Senate as a Democrat from Georgia.
At a meeting of the state’s ethics commission, the nonprofit New Georgia Project conceded that it had paid for fliers and door-to-door canvassers telling voters to support Ms. Abrams and other Democrats.
Under federal law, tax-exempt charities like this one are forbidden to campaign for candidates, but this case was about a violation of state law.
The nonprofit conceded that, because of its campaign work for Ms. Abrams, it should have registered with the state as a political committee, but it did not. A related nonprofit, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, admitted the same.
As a result, the two nonprofits agreed to pay a $300,000 penalty. David Emadi, the executive director of the commission, said it was the largest fine in its 38-year history.
The admissions will settle a six-year battle between the nonprofits and the state ethics commission, which first accused Ms. Abrams’s group of wrongdoing in 2019.
“They’re now admitting everything we said was true,” Mr. Emadi said in an interview this week. He said the nonprofits had asked to pay the fine in two $150,000 installments, one now and one in a year.
Commissioners voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve the resolution. They praised the work of the committee’s staff and the state attorney general in pursuing the case over five years in the face of what they described as the nonprofits’ refusal to cooperate.
A spokesman for Ms. Abrams said in a statement that “Stacey hasn’t been involved in the organization’s work since she departed in 2017.” Mr. Warnock’s Senate staff issued a statement saying that, while he was the leader of the New Georgia Project in 2018, “compliance decisions were not a part of that work.”
During the ethics commission meeting on Wednesday, David Fox, a lawyer for the nonprofits, said they were “eager to put the matter behind them.”
“At a fundamental level, my clients understand and respect the commission’s decision on the facts of the law,” Mr. Fox said, appearing via a video linkup, “and we believe that this is a reasonable resolution of this longstanding dispute.”
The ethics commission’s charges were aimed at the nonprofits. It did not seek to punish Ms. Abrams or Mr. Warnock personally.
Ms. Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2013, when she was the minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives. She later gave up her formal role at the nonprofit but remained close to its leaders. Mr. Warnock led the group until he began his Senate campaign in 2020.
The group was credited with conducting mass voter registration drives that helped turn Georgia blue in 2020 — propelling President Biden, Senator Jon Ossoff and Mr. Warnock to surprising victories in a long-red state.
Under federal tax law, a tax-exempt charity can register voters but not tell them whom to vote for. In 2018, however, the New Georgia Project did just that, the state ethics commission said.
The commission said the nonprofit paid for fliers endorsing Ms. Abrams and for canvassers who were told to say, “She’s the leader we trust to fight for us under the gold dome” of Georgia’s State Capitol.
Some of the canvassers were nominally paid for by the related nonprofit, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, which has more legal leeway to campaign. But Mr. Emadi said there was actually little distinction between the groups. Bank records showed that the New Georgia Project was in charge of it all.
In all, the two nonprofits acknowledged that they should have disclosed $3.2 million in spending.
Mr. Emadi called the nonprofits’ spending the “most amount of money that we’ve ever caught a group dumping to illegally influence our elections.”
The Georgia ethics commission includes four Republicans and one Democrat. In 2022, the commission voted unanimously that there was probable cause that the nonprofit had violated the law, a vote that allowed the investigation to proceed.
The New Georgia Project’s admissions raised questions about whether it had also violated the provision in federal tax law that bars tax-exempt charities from endorsing candidates. The Internal Revenue Service, which enforces that rule, declined to comment.
Aishvarya Kavi contributed reporting.
