Chris Lehane
Encyclopedia
Christopher Stephen Lehane (born June 2, 1967) is an American political consultant and crisis communications expert who has served as a lawyer, spokesperson and expert in opposition research for the Clinton
White House, Democratic candidates for public office and various business, Labor, entertainment and professional sports organizations.A graduate of Amherst College
and Harvard Law School
, he was a lawyer and spokesperson in the Clinton White House where he and his current business partner Mark Fabiani were called the "Masters of Disaster" by Newsweek
magazine for their part in a "rapid-response" team employed by to respond to the increasing number of investigations of the Clinton Administration.
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 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 of 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
.
Lehane is often included in discussions of "politics of personal destruction" 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.
Lehane is often quoted as an expert on crisis management Lehane's firm has represented California Edison during the California Energy crisis, Goldman Sachs
during the financial crisis, Cisco Systems
when the Internet bubble burst, Hollywood studios, Indian tribes and other leading businesses.
Lehane does significant sports work having represented the National Hockey League
, the City of Sacramento
in its effort to build a new sports and entertainment complex, the Big East, Marion Jones
and the San Diego Chargers
.
Lehane's entertainment work has included helping Michael Moore
with his films such as Fahrenheit 911 and SiCKO
and "orchestrating" the News's Corps funded and minority organization supported Don't Count Us Out campaign against the Nielsen Media Research relating to concerns that minority viewership was being undercounted.
Lehane has worked for consumer groups, trial lawyers and helped lead organized Labor's opposition to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
's agenda in California.
"If the other guy brings a knife, bring a gun."—Chris Lehane, quoted in the Sacramento Bee, December 23, 2009
"[Y]ou have to plant a lot of seeds in the spring and the summer so you can capitalize on it. If you have a story that's going to hit in the middle of September, middle of October, what you really want to do is build several things that come off of the story so that it's not just a one-day hit. If the story runs on the front page of a major paper, you also want to set it up so that it hits some of the television morning shows, and from there you want to have surrogates out the next day, so that you get a second hit. On the third day, ideally, you have some additional information you've been holding back that you can feed into it, another round of stories. On the fourth or fifth day you try to hold your candidate back from saying anything, so that eventually, when he does say something about the issue, you get another round of stories. If you do it all effectively, you can basically wipe out a guy's entire week. He'll spend the entire week responding to a story that showed up on a Monday."—Chris Lehane, quoted in Atlantic Monthly, June 2004
"[H]it back harder than you got"—Chris Lehane, quoted in San Francisco Chronicle
, October 24, 2004
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
White House, Democratic candidates for public office and various business, Labor, entertainment and professional sports organizations.A graduate of Amherst College
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
and Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it is the oldest continually-operating law school in the United States and is home to the largest academic law library in the world. The school is routinely ranked by the U.S...
, he was a lawyer and spokesperson in the Clinton White House where he and his current business partner Mark Fabiani were called the "Masters of Disaster" by Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
magazine for their part in a "rapid-response" team employed by to respond to the increasing number of investigations of the Clinton Administration.
Political work
In 1992, Lehane was the political director of the Clinton-Gore presidential campaignBill Clinton presidential campaign, 1992
Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for President of the United States was a critical turning point for the Democratic Party, which had controlled the White House for only four of the previous twenty-four years. Initially viewed as an unlikely prospect to win his party's nomination, Clinton did so and...
in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, 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
Whitewater
Whitewater is formed in a rapid, when a river's gradient increases enough to disturb its laminar flow and create turbulence, i.e. form a bubbly, or aerated and unstable current; the frothy water appears white...
and the Monica Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Samille Lewinsky is an American woman with whom United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996...
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
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
. 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
Karl Rove
Karl Christian Rove was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush until Rove's resignation on August 31, 2007. He has headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives...
, call him "one of the Democratic Party’s best opposition researchers" credited Lehane's making public George W. Bush's DWI history 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
Andrew Cuomo
Andrew Mark Cuomo is the 56th and current Governor of New York, having assumed office on January 1, 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 64th New York State Attorney General, and was the 11th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development...
and former California Governor Gray Davis
Gray Davis
Joseph Graham "Gray" Davis, Jr. is an American Democratic politician who served as California's 37th Governor from 1999 until being recalled in 2003...
.
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
Wesley Clark
Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., is a retired general of the United States Army. Graduating as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and later graduated from the...
bid for the 2004 nomination when he mounted considerable efforts to derail the Howard Dean
Howard Dean
Howard Brush Dean III is an American politician and physician from Vermont. He served six terms as the 79th Governor of Vermont and ran unsuccessfully for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. He was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009. Although his U.S...
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 of 2009, Lehane, and Republican political consultant Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt is an American campaign strategist and public relations worker for the U.S. Republican Party. He specializes in political "message development and strategy"...
, 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
California Proposition 19 (2010)
California Proposition 19 was a ballot initiative on the November 2, 2010 statewide ballot...
, 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
Meg Whitman
Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard. A native of Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School...
.
Lehane is often included in discussions of "politics of personal destruction" 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.
Business work
Lehane and his partner Mark Fabiani are retained to represent various corporate, Labor, entertainment and sports organizations.Lehane is often quoted as an expert on crisis management Lehane's firm has represented California Edison during the California Energy crisis, Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...
during the financial crisis, Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
when the Internet bubble burst, Hollywood studios, Indian tribes and other leading businesses.
Lehane does significant sports work having represented the National Hockey League
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is an unincorporated not-for-profit association which operates a major professional ice hockey league of 30 franchised member clubs, of which 7 are currently located in Canada and 23 in the United States...
, the City of Sacramento
Sacramento
Sacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...
in its effort to build a new sports and entertainment complex, the Big East, Marion Jones
Marion Jones
Marion Lois Jones , also known as Marion Jones-Thompson, is a former world champion track and field athlete, and a former professional basketball player for Tulsa Shock in the WNBA...
and the San Diego Chargers
San Diego Chargers
The San Diego Chargers are a professional American football team based in San Diego, California. they were members of the Western Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League...
.
Lehane's entertainment work has included helping Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
with his films such as Fahrenheit 911 and SiCKO
Sicko
Sicko is a 2007 documentary film by American filmmaker Michael Moore. The film investigates health care in the United States, focusing on its health insurance and the pharmaceutical industry. The movie compares the for-profit, non-universal U.S...
and "orchestrating" the News's Corps funded and minority organization supported Don't Count Us Out campaign against the Nielsen Media Research relating to concerns that minority viewership was being undercounted.
Lehane has worked for consumer groups, trial lawyers and helped lead organized Labor's opposition to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
's agenda in California.
Quotations
"If you look at the landscape in politics, business, entertainment, and sports over the last 20 or 30 years there's been a similar dynamic. You've had an explosion of media outlets. Information now travels at hyper speeds. The public has both a thirst for it, and particularly with social networking, they can now engage and participate with newsgathering and discussion. All that means there's a higher premium than ever before on making sure you protect the brand. In politics, especially after Watergate, new standards came into play, and success became a question not of whether you were going to face a crisis, but how you responded when you did face a crisis. The politicians who have been successful at the highest level are those who have been able to manage their way through a crisis and go on and get reelected. That's now becoming true in other areas, like sports."—Chris Lehane, quoted in Atlantic Monthly, March 17, 2010"If the other guy brings a knife, bring a gun."—Chris Lehane, quoted in the Sacramento Bee, December 23, 2009
"[Y]ou have to plant a lot of seeds in the spring and the summer so you can capitalize on it. If you have a story that's going to hit in the middle of September, middle of October, what you really want to do is build several things that come off of the story so that it's not just a one-day hit. If the story runs on the front page of a major paper, you also want to set it up so that it hits some of the television morning shows, and from there you want to have surrogates out the next day, so that you get a second hit. On the third day, ideally, you have some additional information you've been holding back that you can feed into it, another round of stories. On the fourth or fifth day you try to hold your candidate back from saying anything, so that eventually, when he does say something about the issue, you get another round of stories. If you do it all effectively, you can basically wipe out a guy's entire week. He'll spend the entire week responding to a story that showed up on a Monday."—Chris Lehane, quoted in Atlantic Monthly, June 2004
"[H]it back harder than you got"—Chris Lehane, quoted in San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
, October 24, 2004