Lockwood Strategy Lab is a left-of-center digital ad consultancy for political campaigns. Lockwood was founded by ACRONYM and PACRONYM president Tara McGowan, both of which she founded just after the creation of Lockwood Strategy Lab. Lockwood began doing political consulting for local and state campaigns for various Democrats in 2016. In 2020, it focused on the Presidential election, opposing President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. ^[1]

Lockwood Strategy is named after Belva Lockwood, one of the very first women to run for President of the United States. ^[2]

Tara McGowan

Lockwood Strategy president Tara McGowan also runs the liberal “social welfare” advocacy group ACRONYM, which she founded one month after founding Lockwood Strategy Lab. Lockwood Strategy Lab is completely owned by ACRONYM. ^{[3] [4]}

On October 10, 2018, American Society on Aging wrote a letter to McGowan calling on her to take down an ad that was considered ageist and “not a worthy complement to a progressive agenda”. ^[5]

Clients and Funding

McGowan has stated that Planned Parenthood was Lockwood Strategy Lab’s first client. ^[6]

The Democratic Party of Virginia paid Lockwood $150,000 on October 1, 2019 for “internet advertising”. One month earlier, The Democratic Party of Virginia received a $150,000 from Lockwood’s parent group ACRONYM. As well, The Democratic Party of Virginia paid Lockwood $25,000 on August 12, 2019 for “digital consulting services.” ^{[7] [8] [9]}

Planned Parenthood Votes paid $72,000, part of which about $3,000 was for “digital advertising production” in November 2018. ^[10]

National Democratic Redistricting Committee paid $10,000 to Lockwood Strategy Lab to conduct political advertising for Wisconsin State Sen. Patty Schachtner’s (D-Somerset) election in 2018. ^[11]

Lockwood Strategy Lab’s largest client is PACRONYM, ACRONYM’s affiliated Super PAC. PACRONYM paid Lockwood $1 million in 2018 for races in Pennsylvania. ^[12]

Win Justice paid $245,000 between 2017 and 2018, and Senator Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) campaign paid $10,500 to Lockwood. Change Now solicited Lockwood as well. ^[13]

Community Change Voters, which received $5 million from George Soros during the 2018 election, paid Lockwood $282,000 for their services, of which at least $13,000 was for ad placement. ^{[14] [15]}

Women Vote! paid $158,499 to Lockwood on September 6, 2018. ^[16]

Courier Newsroom

After the announcement of a $75 million advertising campaign by its parent group and client PACRONYM, Lockwood Strategy supported a journalism project focused on news reporting in the same five states as PACRONYM’s targets states for political advertising. ^[17]

Lockwood is affiliated with Courier Newsroom, a collection of left-wing “news” sites headed by former Democratic Wisconsin State Senator Pat Krietlow. Lockwood also posts job listings for Courier Newsroom on its website. ^{[18] [19]}

Lockwood financially supports the Dogwood, a Virginia digital “news” outlet that is part of the ACRONYM-affiliated Courier Newsroom led by Meghan McCarthy. ^{[20] [21]}