Anonymous website attacking WV gubernatorial candidate revealed to be operative with ties to Team Morrisey fundraising partner

An investigation into an anonymous website revealed Caiden Cowger, the Director of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia, set up the site to make claims about candidate Moore Capito’s personal life. Cowger’s role a member of the Upshur County GOP Executive Committee calls into question the group’s relationship to Capito’s opponent, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

Katie Kuba of My Buckhannon reported Cowger as a member of the Upshur County GOP Executive Committee on September 19, 2023.

Mar. 28, 2024 • Written by Kyle Vass

In early March, an article titled “Moore Capito Could Become West Virginia’s First Gay Governor,” appeared without byline on the Pittsburgh Observer, a self-proclaimed news website that listed no publisher.

While who wrote the story was a mystery, the political motive wasn’t. Claim a gubernatorial candidate in a socially conservative state like West Virginia is gay and tank his chances of winning.

Caiden Cowger published an anonymous article on March 4, 2024 that made claims about gubernatorial candidate Moore Capito’s personal life.

A Dragline investigation into the Pittsburgh Observer revealed that it belongs to Caiden Cowger, the president of the anti-gay lobby group Family Policy Council of West Virginia and member of the Upshur GOP – a partner in gubernatorial candidate and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s joint fundraising committee Team Morrisey.

Team Morrisey’s most recent statement of organization from the Federal Election Commission’s database lists Upshur County GOP as part of the team’s joint fundraising committee.

Through their agreement with Team Morrisey, Upshur County GOP has received $82,296.86 to date – an amount they didn’t disclose to the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office until Dragline sent that office an inquiry.

Joint fundraising committees filed with the Federal Election Commission allow politicians to join forces and take donations above the state-level limitations as long as they stick to a predetermined split of the total funds in the process and partner with an entity that isn’t affiliated with specific candidates.

In the case of Morrisey, his team originally filed with the West Virginia Republican Party on March 9, 2023, but the following month removed the state party and joined with the Upshur County GOP. Per the Team’s latest agreement, their fundraising priority is funding Morrisey’s primary race for governor – a mission at odds with the state Republican Party currently fielding four potential candidates.

The partnership is high-profile for a county-level party that typically only brings in about $1,000 a year in donations. As for the group’s involvement with Cowger, Upshur County GOP Chair (and Delegate) Carl Martin said it has been minimal. “He is essentially just an honorary member.” Martin said, “[Cowger] has never officially been a member and has never been to a meeting whatsoever.” 

Martin provided minutes for five Upshur County GOP meetings – none of which showed Cowger as having attended – but did not respond when asked for more thorough documentation. 

In the last four years, Martin, his brother Senator Patrick Martin (R – Lewis), and the Upshur County GOP have paid Cowger $7,751.30 for campaign services. Delegate Martin said in an interview that in light of the anonymous piece Cowger published about Capito, neither he nor Upshur County GOP would be hiring Cowger for future work.

Beyond Upshur County, Cowger Creative has become a common sighting in campaign finance reports. Cowger has made political advertisements for every position in the state from city council to Chief Justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. While Delegate Martin and the Upshur GOP were quick to distance themselves from Cowger over this incident, his disregard for standards as a “journalist,” lobbyist and political advertisement designer have been well documented since Cowger was 13 years old.

In 2012, Cowger made international news when he uploaded a four and a half minute anti-gay rant to YouTube. The lanky high school freshman spoke into an oversized broadcast microphone from a desk in his Buckhannon home and blamed Barack Obama for “turning kids gay” and offered this survey of his peers: “We’ve got about 30 teenagers in this county that I’m at who are homosexuals and it is sickening.” 

A young Caiden Cowger poses with 2012 US Senate candidate John Raese at a fundraising event. (Caiden Cowger / Meta)

A young Caiden Cowger poses with former New York Rudy Giuliani at a fundraising event for John Raese in 2012. (Caiden Cowger / Meta)

Cowger began making videos in an era where a genre of teenage conservatives repackaging what their older counterparts were saying was finding unprecedented success. But unlike Ben Shapiro who rose to prominence debating people with lightning-fast rhetoric, or the “fundraising savant” Charlie Kirk whose talk show was the byproduct of his success as a political organizer, Cowger failed to find much traction on a national stage.

Cowger, age 13, sits behind a desk in his Buckhannon home producing episodes of his podcast. (Caiden Cowger / Meta)

But week by week, the podcaster produced shows, networking with conservative politicians across the state at time when West Virginia politics were swinging deep red. When Cowger became an adult in 2018, he launched Cowger Creative and got to work designing mailers and scripting television ads for prominent politicians in the state, abandoning his public life for that of a political operative. 

West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Justice Tim Armstead hired Cowger to make a campaign ad for his 2018 race. (Cowger Creative / Meta)

In its first year, the advertising company landed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Tim Armstead as a client. As of the last state election in 2022, Cowger Media had earned $76,237.29. Soon after launching his company, he was hired by the Family Policy Council of West Virginia where, like the video of him ranting about Obama, his political ads garnered international infamy.

Cowger designed an attack ad targeting a West Virginia politician over his voting record on abortion. (Herald Sun)

Since taking over as the head of the Family Policy Council of West Virginia, Cowger has created two state political action committees (GO WV Pac and RightAct) where FPCWV is the sole donor and his ad company, Cowger Creative LLC, is the sole recipient of funds. Combined, the PACs have helped Cowger move $15,500 from his non-profit company to his for-profit company. 

According to documents filed with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office, GO WV PAC is run by an “S. Fitzimmons.” But the phone number provided by the PAC’s website (Gun Owners WV) leads to a voicemail message for Cowger Creative.

Using DomainTools’DSN DB Scout, Dragline determined that In addition to the Pittsburgh Observer and Gun Owners WV, Cowger has developed over 70 websites since 2019, a majority of which have served as sites for anonymous news agencies or advocacy organizations.

The Wheeling Herald, a website maintained by Cowger, publishes articles with no publisher information and using fake identities for its authors’ names. (Wheeling Herald)

The Morgantown Post also has no publisher information and relies on fake identities for bylines. An analysis by “Is it AI?”’s AI-Generated Image Detector’s revealed that the picture for this article’s author is “highly likely” to be generated using AI. (Morgantown Post)

In addition to running these sites, Cowger is running three websites for politicians in the state: Scott Adams for the House of Delegates, Mark Hunt for state auditor, and Josh Mathis for the state Senate. Adams and Hunt confirmed via telephone interview that they hired Cowger to build their sites but Mathis said, “I never asked [Cowger] to build a site for me.” (After reaching out to Mathis for comment, the site promoting his campaign was taken offline.)

Since news of Cowger’s involvement in the Pittsburgh Overserver broke, he has taken down several sites or has linked himself to them by adding Cowger Media to site footers.

Both in the limelight and behind it, the negative reporting on Cowger over the years seems to have little impact on the willingness of politicians in West Virginia to hire him. His largest client, Senator Mark Hunt (R–Kanawha) paid Cowger’s agency $4,500 in the last statewide election.

When asked about his previous work with Cowger, Hunt said he believes he hired Cowger for digital advertising. When asked about the Pittsburgh Observer article, Hunt said “I wouldn’t have supported the piece. It was a cloak and dagger piece. But let’s face it, that’s politics in the 2020s.” 

Hunt said the news about Cowger doesn’t affect his willingness to work with him in the future.

“I'm not going sit here and tell you that [my] campaign is not going to use him for digital because he's quite good at what he does.”

As far as Hunt is concerned, the question isn’t who published the website, it’s who paid for it — likening Cowger to other political operatives in the state. “Caiden isn’t behind that piece. He’s a paid gun just like Mike Plante, just like Greg Thomas. Someone paid for that.”

“Now who was that someone?” Hunt added. “I guarantee you it wasn’t Caiden Cowger who paid for it. I mean, Caiden’s a guy stretching to make ends meet.”

When reached for comment on this article, Team Morrisey declined. Cowger didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.