OpenAI’s Lehane Calls AI the Number-One Issue of the 2028 Election

OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane has written a memo arguing that AI will be the number-one issue of the 2028 presidential election and laying out five questions he says candidates must answer to build an AI agenda. The memo was made public on November 2, 2026.

In the memo, titled “2028: The AI Election”, Lehane writes that the candidate who articulates a “compelling third path” between those who would let AI advance “without speed limits” and those who would keep control of the technology “in the hands of a self-appointed elite” will have “an opportunity to define a new contract for this new era.” He compares the 2028 race to the 1932 election, when, he writes, industrialization had broken down the old social contract and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal reimagined it. The memo describes AI as a general purpose technology on the scale of the wheel, the printing press, and electricity, and notes that 2028 will feature the first truly wide-open Democratic presidential primary since 1992.

Polling Cited in the Memo

The memo draws on polling Lehane says he has seen and conducted. In polling he has seen, 65% of voters said AI would be important to their 2026 choices, and by early October 2026 one in five ads aired by Democratic candidates or groups mentioned data centers. In polling he conducted, voters preferred a candidate who leads their party in shaping AI policy over one who follows it by a 25-point margin. Despite safety concerns, 66% of voters supported continued AI development, including 53% who wanted stronger safeguards and oversight, while 24% favored a pause.

The memo also states that half of Americans already use an AI tool at least a few times a week, and that regular users tend to trust the technology more than those who rarely or never use it. Lehane writes that while Republicans are seen as taking political damage over data centers in the 2026 cycle, they are in fact engaged in robust debates about AI’s impacts on families and markets, and that Democrats hoping to win in 2028 will need more than the opposition that helped them gain ground in 2026.

Five Questions for 2028 Candidates

The first question asks how candidates will make sure AI stays safe and people stay in control. Citing polling in which 81% of voters said AI could not have a soul and 15% said it could, the memo calls for enforceable safety standards, independent assessments, the ability to restrict or shut down systems when necessary, and public oversight of decisions about acceptable risk.

The second asks whether the tax code will help Americans participate in the AI economy or concentrate its gains. The memo reports that 41% of voters expect people like themselves to benefit financially from AI over the next five years, while 84% expect AI to benefit the richest 1%. It rules out both simply taxing AI and giving AI companies another tax break, calling instead for policy that rewards work, encourages investment, increases ownership, and expands participation in the upside.

The third asks whether the country is protecting children and preparing workers for what is coming. The memo calls for age-appropriate protections and clear boundaries around AI companions for minors, names the American Federation of Teachers and North America’s Building Trades Unions as partners, and states that OpenAI’s Piketon compute campus alone will need 25,000 skilled tradespeople. It adds that eight in 10 voters want new work to be at least part of the solution to AI’s impact on jobs.

The fourth asks whether AI is making life more affordable and opportunity more accessible, including whether it is lowering healthcare costs, expanding access to education, and making government services more efficient without reducing quality. The fifth asks whether America continued to lead in AI innovation or gave away its lead to China. The memo says OpenAI analysts uncovered likely Communist Party influence operations that generated social media content claiming AI buildouts were increasing household electric bills, and it warns that backing a data-center moratorium and then losing the AI lead to China could well become the 2028 equivalent of the 2002 vote to go to war in Iraq.

The Memo and Its Author

Lehane serves as OpenAI’s Chief Global Affairs Officer. In a September 9, 2026 post on OpenAI’s website, he called for mandatory, capability-based national AI safety regulation and announced OpenAI’s support for four California bills covering independent safety assessments, AI-auditor standards, protections for young people, and safeguards against AI-enabled biological threats.

The memo closes by urging candidates to look beyond the AI debates of 2026 and define what they want the country to become through AI, arguing that America’s success should ultimately be measured by the power the technology gives its people rather than the strength of its models.