Chris Lehane

Christopher Stephen Lehane (born June 2, 1967) is an American political consultant and cryptocurrency executive who has served as a lawyer, spokesperson, and expert in opposition research for the Bill Clinton administration, Democratic Party candidates for public office, and various business, labor, entertainment, and professional sports organizations.

A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School, Lehane 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 for their part in a "rapid-response" team employed to respond to the increasing number of investigations of the Clinton administration. In 2012, Lehane co-authored a book on damage control titled Masters of Disaster published by Palgrave, MacMillan's academic imprint. He also wrote and produced the film Knife Fight, a political satire acquired by IFC and released in January 2013.

From 2015 until 2022, Lehane served as the Head of Global Policy and Public Affairs for home-sharing startup Airbnb. He joined Haun Ventures, a crypto investment firm, in 2022, and is known for his strong support of blockchain technology, and his proposal for a new deal for Web3. In 2024, Lehane was appointed as Vice President of Global Policy at OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company known for developing ChatGPT.

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 the 2000 U.S. presidential election 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 Bush's driving while intoxicated history just before the election as the basis for Gore winning the popular vote in the 2000 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. 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 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; and 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. Also 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.

Lehane is often included in discussions of bare-knuckled methodologies employed by political campaign consultants, including feeding information to selected media outlets.

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 during the financial crisis, Cisco Systems when the Internet bubble burst, Lance Armstrong on various matters, Al Gore's Current TV when it fired Keith Olbermann; Madonna in relation to the Kabbalah Center and her charity in Africa; Rob Reiner and First Five; 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 News Corp.-funded Don't Count Us Out campaign against the Nielsen Media Research relating to concerns that minority viewership was being undercounted.

Lehane was involved in frequent aggressive campaigns against government officials, in the run-up to the establishment of short-term rental regulations in Boston, Airbnb went after city council member Michelle Wu, who today is Boston’s mayor. The home-sharing giant Tuesday e-mailed a broad swath of its Boston customers urging them to e-mail City Hall to oppose ‘unreasonable restrictions’ it said Wu has proposed on short-term rentals. In July 2024, Lehane joined the board of Coinbase.

Book and film Lehane is co-author, along with his business partner Mark Fabiani and Stanford Business School Professor Bill Guttentag, of Masters of Disaster: The Ten Commandments of Damage Control.