National Campaigns
Need to Impeach
Foundation Public LLC’s founder Chris Lehman co-created the Need to Impeach campaign with Tom Steyer, Chris Lehane, and Kevin Mack. The aggressive asymmetric effort began with a pointed letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that was featured in the New York Times and followed up by a groundbreaking television campaign the Lehman created, produced with Mark Putnam, and oversaw execution through 2019. Within three days, the Need To Impeach campaign had hundreds of thousands of followers and its first rally, within a couple of weeks had well over a million members with representation from every state, and a few months later was the largest progressive grassroots organization in the United States.
2019-2020 - Tom Steyer for President
Just before forming Foundation Public LLC, Chris Lehman finished serving as Senior Advisor for Paid Media & Message. Reporting directly to Lead Strategist Doug Rubin, Lehman was responsible for directing and overseeing all public opinion research, message & branding development, as well as creation, direction, production of all television, radio, direct mail, and other paid media.
Rubin and Lehman’s campaign designed around Tom Steyer’s rare and unique brand of bold integrity, that “actions speak louder than words”, propelled the progressive San Francisco climate activist and philanthropist into a remarkable third place in the decisive South Carolina Primary beating much more famous Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Bucking the modern political trend of saying different things to different people, Tom Steyer’s presidential campaign instead built trust and repeatedly exceeded expectations in the early primary states by communicating directly and respectfully in an array of different paid mediums through a unifying story platform developed by Steyer, Lehman, Rubin and Kirk Cheyfitz that we must fight together for justice for Americans to reach their potential and gain true freedom. Steyer used the campaign platform to generate large and surprising shifts in favorability and popularity numbers across racial and socioeconomic lines in the highly diverse electorates in Nevada and South Carolina.
