Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater (February 26, 1951 - March 29, 1991) was a U.S. political consultant and strategist.

Atwater was a trusted advisor of U.S. President's Nixon, Reagan and Bush Sr. Atwater's skills at lying and attack politics brought him and his candidates success.

His greatest success came in the 1988 presidential election. A particularly aggressive media program, including a television advertisement related to the case of Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who subsequently committed a rape while on a furlough from a life sentence in a Massachusetts prison, allowed George H.W. Bush to overcome Michael Dukakis's 17% lead in early polls and win both the electoral and popular vote. After the election Atwater was named chairman of the Republican National Committee.

During that election, Atwater was assigned a "minder" by the Bush campaign, George W. Bush. The younger Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove, would later employ Atwater's tactics against John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary.

Atwater's opponents characterized him as "the Darth Vader of the Republican party", "the happy hatchet man", and "the guy who went negative for the sheer joy of it."

In 1991, Atwater was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Shortly before his death he said he had converted to Catholicism and apologized to Dukakis for remarks which he had made during the 1988 campaign.

A recent biography is Bad Boy: The Life and Politics of Lee Atwater, which was written by John Joseph Brady in 1997.