Hate Group Claims WV Gov Candidate Is Secretly Gay
March 20, 2024

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The Curious Case of Caiden Cowger

LOCAL COLUMNS
MAR 18, 2024
STEVEN ALLEN ADAMS
Statehouse Reporter

When writing about lobbyists in my column last summer, I wrote about Caiden Cowger, a Republican political operative and the president of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia. ... While Cowger’s predecessor at the Family Policy Council, Allen Whitt, was a registered lobbyist with the West Virginia Ethics Commission, Cowger has never registered as a lobbyist. As such, he also provides no expenditure reports to the Ethics Commission. ... Yet, Cowger actively lobbies on specific issues directly to lawmakers during legislative sessions and has acted almost as an unpaid staffer for several Republican state senators, including during the 2024 session. ... Cowger has been walking a fine line for a long time between wanting to be a staffer, a lobbyist, and even a news reporter. But now, Cowger is at the center of a poorly executed hit job against a Republican candidate for governor using a recently bought website domain, a story with no byline and no quotes, and connections to at least two other Republican candidates for governor.

The following is based on excellent reporting by Kyle Vass (@WilliamKyleVass on the website formerly known as Twitter), an investigative reporter for Dragline and a staffer for the West Virginia ACLU, and The Real WV (therealwv.com), a news website ran by former Senate Minority Leader Stephen Baldwin. Those of us who spent nearly all 60 days under the golden dome for the session are still suffering from post-session jet lag, so I appreciate the reporters who started tracking this. ... In short, a news outlet called the Pittsburgh Observer published a story last month making a false and unsubstantiated claim about Republican candidate for governor Moore Capito, a claim I refuse to repeat here. The story included no byline from a reporter, no sources, no quotes, and none of the who, what, when, where, and how — the basics that any journalist needs for all stories. ... According to Vass, the Pittsburgh Observer was a real news publication, but it went out of business in 2011. The domain name was purchased in February by — you guessed it — Caiden Cowger. In fact, Vass discovered that Cowger owns at least 13 domain names for websites.

According to State Code 3-8-11, “Any person who shall, knowingly, make or publish, or cause to be made or published, any false statement in regard to any candidate, which statement is intended or tends to affect any voting at any election whatever … is guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or confined in jail for not more than one year, or, in the discretion of the court, shall be subject to both such fine and imprisonment.” ... Both Vass and Baldwin said the first group to begin pushing the deep fake Pittsburgh Observer article was Vets4Coal through its Facebook page (which is now conveniently shut down), run by James McCormick, a supporter of Secretary of State and Republican candidate for governor Mac Warner. The Warner campaign quickly released a statement denying involvement with the deep fake article.

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On the lobbyist front, Baldwin and The Real WV report that Cowger has keycard access to the State Capitol Building. As far as I know, only Capitol employees, contractors, and news organizations with office space in the Capitol Press Room have keycard access, though I can confirm that some registered lobbyists have keycard access. ... Cowger isn’t a registered lobbyist, he’s not credentialed media with office space, and he’s not paid staff. Why and how does he have a keycard? The Division of Protective Services won’t comment to Baldwin. ... The Ethics Commission and the State Election Commission should consider further investigation into these matters.

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