Tara Setmayer

Tara Olivia Setmayer (born September 9, 1975) is a former CNN political commentator, contributor to ABC News and former GOP communications director on Capitol Hill. She has appeared on ABC's The View, ABC's Good Morning America, and on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. On January 9, 2020, Setmayer was named as a Harvard Institute of Politics Spring 2020 Resident Fellow. Also in January 2020, she joined The Lincoln Project as a senior advisor and hosts the live show The Breakdown alongside co-founder Rick Wilson, on the organization's streaming channel, LPTV. Setmayer was also named a University of Virginia Center for Politics resident scholar for the 2020–21 academic year. In collaboration with the Center for Politics, she narrated the 3-part documentary, Dismantling Democracy, which aired nationally on PBS stations in September 2020 and is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Early life and education Setmayer was born in 1975 in Queens, New York, but raised in Paramus, a borough of Bergen County in northern New Jersey. Her family has been longtime residents of Paramus, where her grandfather, Emil Setmayer, served 40 years with the Paramus Police Department, retiring as captain, as well as 71 years with the Paramus Company 03 Volunteer Fire Department. She was educated at Paramus High School, a public high school in Bergen County, New Jersey, from which she graduated in 1993, followed by The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in political science with a focus on public policy and journalism. Setmayer is of mixed heritage: Her mother is of German and Italian descent and her father is of Afro-Guatemalan descent.