Chris Lehane - Political Work

Political Work

In 1992, Lehane was the political director of the Clinton-Gore presidential campaign in Maine, and was later brought into the White House where he served as a lawyer in the White House Counsel's Office who worked as part of a small unit responsible for helping the White House manage various scandals throughout the 1990s such as Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky affair.

In 1995 Lehane authored a 332-page "report" on a media "conspiracy" against the Clintons, of which only 2 and 1/2 pages are written text; the remainder are newspaper and internet clippings. This report was the origin of the phrase "vast right wing conspiracy" that is often attributed to Hillary Clinton. Because of Lehane's scrutiny of the right-wing media "food chain," he is often credited with being a proponent of its methods within the Democratic party.

In the 2000 Presidential campaign, Lehane served as the Press Secretary for Vice President Al Gore. Lehane was credited with improving Gore's press relations with the press corps, his one liners and for his opposition research work. In his 2010 book, President George W. Bush's top political strategist Karl Rove, call him "one of the Democratic Party’s best opposition researchers" credited Lehane's making public George W. Bush's DWI history just before the election as the basis for Gore winning the popular vote in the 2000 presidential election. Lehane has done work for other leading political figures in the U.S., including New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and former California Governor Gray Davis.

The New York Times labeled Lehane the "Master of the Political Dark Arts" for his opposition research work on behalf of the failed Wesley Clark bid for the 2004 nomination when he mounted considerable efforts to derail the Howard Dean bid, portraying him as hypocritical, dishonest, and inconsistent.

In 2007, Lehane helped create the Lincoln Brigade, an organization that defeated a Republican sponsored ballot initiative designed to change how California divides up its Electoral College votes.

In April 2009, Lehane, and Republican political consultant Steve Schmidt, opened up a ballot initiative political firm. Lehane has served as a strategist on various statewide ballot campaigns, including running the "no" side to a Republican Party sponsored Electoral College initiative, Labor's Proposition 17, the Chamber of Commerce sponsored effort to change the state's class action law, No On 17, the effort to pass California Proposition 19, or the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 and other statewide and local initiatives.

In 2010, Lehane helped launch Level The Playing Field an independent expenditure organization backed by organized Labor designed to target Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.

In 2010 Lehane was a lead strategist on No On 23, the successful effort to beat back the oil industry's effort to overturn California's precedent using climate change laws. He was active in the June 2012 campaign to raise the tobacco tax in California and is the lead strategist for Proposition 39, the Clean Energy Jobs initiative, which seeks to close an existing loop-hole in the California state tax code that provides a more favorable tax treatment for out of state companies who do business in California compared to in state companies. He serves on the board of advisors for various high tech companies, non-profit boards, including as member of the Board of Trustees of Amherst College.

Lehane is often included in discussions of bare knuckled methodologies employed by political campaign consultants, including feeding information to selected media outlets. Lehane often works as a television commentator and a frequent op ed contributor.