Tara McGowan

Prior to heading the ACRONYM network, McGowan worked at the Democratic Party-aligned Super PAC Priorities USA, Tom Steyer’s environmentalist political network NextGen Climate Action, and worked as a staffer on President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. McGowan has also worked as a press secretary to U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and as an associate producer for CBS News and the PBS show “Frontline.” ^{34 5}

Priorities USA

Prior to creating the ACRONYM network, Tara McGowan was digital director for Priorities USA. ⁶ In 2016, McGowan was part of a direct pitch to encourage people to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president. In video submissions for use on social media platforms, former Obama administration staffers pleaded with voters who were “crazy” for then-President Barack Obama to be “crazy” for Clinton. ⁷

In her role as digital director, McGowan helped Priorities USA target Latino and African American voters with low propensities to vote but strong probabilities that they would support Hillary Clinton. The ads were aimed at mobile users in English and Spanish. ⁸

ACRONYM Network

ACRONYM operates as a 501(c)(4) social welfare group, but the organization houses several for-profit organizations under the IRS designation. For instance, ACRONYM houses Lockwood Strategy, which is for-profit campaign consultancy. The ACRONYM portfolio also contains Shadow, a software development company, an investment arm called FWIW Media that invests in left-leaning organizations, and an apparel company called Rogue Swag. ^{910 11}

Lockwood Strategy

McGowan is the founder of Lockwood Strategy Lab (commonly referred to as “Lockwood Strategy”). ⁵

ACRONYM

In 2017, ACRONYM joined with the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) to run digital ads in Virginia for Democratic candidates. The NRDC and ACRONYM purchased more than $250,000 worth of ad slots for Democratic candidates. ¹² In that year’s elections, McGowan and ACRONYM also worked with Planned Parenthood to target Virginia voters on behalf of gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam (D-VA). ¹³

In 2018, Tara McGowan’s ACRONYM created the project “Knock the Vote.” The project features 30-second video spots aimed at younger voters. In the videos, African-Americans call the police on white people who are “behaving in a socially irresponsible manner” by not voting. ¹⁴ The group also launched one of the largest digital advertising campaigns to register new voters. The voter registration campaign by ACRONYM targeted 36 states, with a heavy focus on Arizona, Florida, and Georgia. ¹⁵

In a tweet posted on September 15, 2020, McGowan referred to ACRONYM as a “dark money nonprofit.” ¹⁶ McGowan has received criticism for her organization’s makeup and structure. Since the profits from her for-profit companies may get routed back to ACRONYM, critics have argued that it was duplicitous of her to place for-profit companies under a nonprofit umbrella and for her to potentially own stock in them. ¹⁷

Shadow and the 2020 Iowa Presidential Caucuses

ACRONYM launched Shadow Inc. in 2019, a technology and software development company that, in its own words, aims to “build political power for the progressive movement.” ^{18 19 20}

In February 2020, an app that Shadow created for the Iowa Democratic Party to process caucus results malfunctioned the night of the presidential caucuses. After the issues occurred, ACRONYM claimed that Shadow was an entirely separate group, and stated that it did not know what happened. ²¹ ACRONYM, however, had announced that it was launching Shadow Inc. in January 2019. ¹⁸⁹

Shadow’s chief executive officer, Gerard Niemira, had published a blog post on ACRONYM’s website in January of 2019 stating that the then-newly created Shadow would “exist under the ACRONYM umbrella.” ²² The Daily Beast also pointed out that ACRONYM’s website claimed responsibility for having “launched” Shadow until the caucus debacle occurred, after which the word “launched” was replaced with “invested in.” Shadow’s official incorporation papers listed its mailing address as ACRONYM’s. ²³

In July 2019, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg‘s campaign had paid Shadow $21,250 for “software rights and subscriptions” according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. ²⁴ A little after midnight the day after the Iowa caucus, before any results came in, Buttigieg claimed victory on Twitter. He fell under criticism for this, leading to speculation on Twitter, particularly among supporters of left-wing U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), about the role his campaign payments might have played in the failures on Shadow’s part. ²⁵

Suspicions intensified when it was discovered that McGowan’s then-husband, Michael Halle, had been hired by Buttigieg’s campaign as a senior strategist in July 2019. ²⁶ (Halle had also worked as a major organizer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in Iowa. ²⁷²⁸) In addition, Halle’s brother Ben Halle was working for Buttigieg as his Iowa communications director. ²⁷ A spokesperson for Buttigieg’s campaign later said the payments were for text message outreach to voters. ²³

Good Information Inc.

In May 2021, Tara McGowan stepped down as CEO of ACRONYM and launched Good Information Inc., a public benefit corporation backed by a multimillion-dollar seed investment led by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and joined by George Soros. The new entity acquired Courier Newsroom from ACRONYM for an undisclosed sum, with McGowan recusing herself from board negotiations due to her concurrent ACRONYM board membership, and also acquired ACRONYM’s “FWIW” newsletter covering digital political ad spending. McGowan continued as the publisher and CEO of Courier, which retained its network of swing-state media outlets. ²⁹

Courier Newsroom

On September 3, 2020, watchdog group Americans for Public Trust filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission which alleged that Courier Newsroom cannot be considered a tax-exempt organization and must register itself as a political committee and report its donors. Americans for Public Trust built its case on an internal memo authored by McGowan in which she spoke of Courier Newsroom as having an explicitly political purpose: countering Republicans and elevating Democratic candidates. Rithesh Menon, the chief operating officer of Courier, claimed that the group is not partisan and described the FEC complaint as politically motivated. ³⁰

In the first half of 2022, Courier raised $15 million in new capital from donors, including Soros and Hoffman. During the 2022 election cycle, Courier and similar outlets spent approximately $3.94 million on Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns that were featured on those platforms more than 115 million times. Courier also received $715,000 in 2022 from a dark money group closely tied to the Democratic Attorneys General Association for “content creation and promotion” and $250,000 from Planned Parenthood between June 2021 and June 2022. ^{31 32 33}

In 2022, the Federal Election Commission unanimously ruled that Courier Newsroom qualifies as a “press entity” exempt from federal campaign finance reporting requirements, concluding that Courier was “acting in a legitimate press function through the production and distribution of both electoral and non-electoral articles, even if some of its content appears to advance its electoral goals.” The ruling shielded Courier from having to register as a political committee or disclose its donors. ³⁴

Between October 2022 and October 2023, McGowan visited the Biden White House nearly 20 times, meeting repeatedly with Jordan Finkelstein, a chief of staff to a senior Biden adviser, and with Patrick Stevenson, the deputy assistant to the president and senior advisor for digital strategy. The frequency of those visits prompted questions about potential coordination between Courier’s partisan content operations and the White House’s digital messaging. ³⁵

2024 Election Cycle

In October 2024 alone, Courier spent more than $6 million on political ads on Facebook, ranking as the third-largest spender on Meta political advertising that month behind only the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump campaigns. Over the three months preceding the election, Courier’s total Facebook and Instagram ad spending exceeded $9 million, with the majority  of ads targeting voters in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. Some of Courier’s ads during this period recruited participants to a program offering up to $400 for talking to family and friends about “voting for Kamala Harris and Democrats this election cycle.” ^{2 34}

The New York Times reported that Courier “published articles favoring Democrats and received millions of dollars from dark money groups,” including $2.6 million paid by a nonprofit linked to House Democratic leadership to promote Courier’s articles. In January 2026, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Future Forward USA Action, the nonprofit arm of the premier super PAC backing Kamala Harris, had given Courier $13,597,759 in 2024, making Courier its fourth-largest expenditure. The revelation was particularly notable because McGowan had publicly accused Future Forward of “political malpractice” after its tax filings showed $27 million left unspent at year’s end, even as those same filings showed she was one of its biggest beneficiaries. ^{36 37}

Post-2024 Activities

In February 2025, McGowan addressed a summit of Democratic donors and operatives convened at the Washington, D.C., offices of Laurene Powell Jobs to discuss how the left’s “well-funded digital media ecosystem failed in the 2024 election.” The meeting included representatives of the Emerson Collective, Catalist, Soros Fund Management, NowThis, and Crooked Media, and focused on producing more effective video content and collaborating with social media influencers to amplify left-of-center messaging. ³⁸

By July 2025, Semafor reported that McGowan had told Courier Newsroom’s donors the organization was coming off its worst fundraising quarter in six years, leaving it unable to effectively boost content to wider audiences. “Without funding, we can’t get these stories in front of more of the audiences we need to be reaching to increase awareness and opposition,” McGowan wrote to donors, adding that Courier had “no new funding to increase our subscriber bases in critical competitive districts and states.” ³⁹

Notwithstanding those fundraising difficulties, McGowan announced in early 2026 that Courier would launch in California, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, and Utah, bringing its total network to 20 outlets. McGowan stated her ultimate goal was to expand Courier to all 50 states. ⁴⁰

Personal Life

Tara McGowan was formerly married to Democratic political operative Michael Halle. The couple divorced in April 2024, according to reporting in the Washington Free Beacon. ⁴¹

In March 2025, it was reported by online media site Semafor that McGowan was dating U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), with a selfie of the two being shared on McGowan’s Instagram page that month with the caption “not postponing joy.” ⁴² Senator Murphy had previously announced his separation from his wife, Catherine Holahan, in November 2024, after roughly 17 years of marriage. ⁴³ The Washington Post reported in October 2025 that Murphy and McGowan were “no longer seeing each other.” ⁴⁴