Hillary Clinton's 'invisible guiding hand' used to work for Bill O'Reilly

Hillary Clinton has a not so well-known statistician who is aiding in strategic decisions.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

published 7 September 2016

Hillary Clinton's right-hand man wasn't always by her side. Just 10 years ago, Elan Kriegel, now the Clinton campaign's director of analytics and arguably its most important operative, was working for conservative Fox News host (and noted Clinton detractor) Bill O'Reilly, Politico reports. Kriegel eventually left O'Reilly's show to finish his degree in statistics, and by 2010, he was working for Democratic National Committee. He then joined President Obama's 2012 re-election bid — and is now central to Clinton's 2016 campaign.

As Politico tells it, O'Reilly's loss has very much been Clinton's gain:

What cities Clinton campaigns in and what states she competes in, when she emails supporters and how those emails are crafted, what doors volunteers knock on and what phone numbers they dial, who gets Facebook ads and who gets printed mailers — all those and more have Kriegel's coding fingerprints on them.To understand Kriegel's role is to understand how Clinton has run her campaign — precise and efficient, meticulous and effective, and, yes, at times more mathematical than inspirational. Top Clinton advisers say almost no major decision is made in Brooklyn without first consulting Kriegel. [Politico]

Kriegel's data has determined how the campaign chose to spend $60 million in television ads, not to mention where the candidate herself actually campaigns. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook describes Kriegel as the campaign's "invisible guiding hand" — and with Donald Trump investing little to nothing in data analytics, Kriegel could also be the campaign's secret weapon to landing a victory in November. Read more about how a former O'Reilly employee became so invaluable to Team Clinton over at Politico.