Meet Lanhee Chen, Candidate For California Controller: Election 2022

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Lanhee Chen has advised a number of political campaigns, but now he’s making a bid of his own. A program director, lecturer and fellow at Stanford, Chen started his political career as a lobbyist before a three-month health care fellowship at the Heritage Foundation, including research critical of Obamacare.

He’s been dubbed by Politico as the Republican Party’s “most-courted ideas advisor,” and has worked on presidential campaigns for George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and Sen. Marco Rubio. And while it’s an uphill battle for a Republican to win any statewide office in California (Chen says this should be a nonpartisan office), his pitch is that someone outside the dominant party will be a stronger and more independent watchdog over the state’s finances. He pledges to use the office to increase transparency and understanding, to spotlight problems and longer-term policy decisions and to restore public faith in state government. For instance, he is highly critical of the state’s oversight of the Employment Development Department.

While he hasn’t publicly said whether he voted for former President Trump in 2016 or 2020, he did distance himself in a February interview with the New York Times in which he said he believes the Republican Party can find its footing in California again if centered around responsibility and accountability. “At some point we’re going to have to move past individual personalities, and I don’t know when that point will be,” he told the Times.

“I’m not going to define my candidacy through the prism of the former president,” he told CalMatters.

EXPERIENCE

• Chen is the David and Diane Steffy Fellow in American Public Policy Studies at the Hoover Institution, the director of domestic policy studies and a lecturer in public policy and lecturer at Stanford Law School, January 2014-April 2018.

Political commentator, CNN: January 2021-July 2021

Board chairperson, El Camino Health: July 2015-present

• El Camino Hospital is a community-based, nonprofit health care provider in the San Francisco area.

Member, Social Security Advisory Board: September 2014–September 2018

• Appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the federal board on the Social Security program to the president, Congress and commissioner of Social Security.

Campaign advisor: 2004-2012

• Advisor to Mitt Romney’s Free & Strong America PAC in 2011 and policy director for his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.
• Deputy campaign manager and policy director for Steve Poizner in the 2010 gubernatorial race.
• Domestic policy advisor for George W. Bush presidential campaign from June-November 2004.

Senior counselor to the deputy secretary, Department of Health and Human Services: May 2008-November 2008

REFERENCES

• U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Bakersfield Republican; U.S. Rep. David Valadao, a Republican from the San Joaquin Valley, and other Republican lawmakers from California
• Former U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican

FUN FACT

• At Harvard University, where Chen received his undergraduate degree in 1999 and his law degree in 2007, his roommates were Tom Cotton, now U.S. senator from Arkansas, and Kim Beom-seok, a prominent Korean-American businessman and internet entrepreneur. Cotton has endorsed Chen.

Want to know where Chen stands on some of the biggest questions facing California? Visit CalMatters for more on his views on hot-button issues, fundraising efforts, and online links.