Hillary Clinton had just wrapped a campaign event in the warehouse of the Smuttynose Brewery in New Hampshire in May, when the crowd began crushing in, reaching out for selfies and handshakes.

Just a few feet away from Clinton dressed in a classic tweed navy shift, Huma Abedin, 39, moved through the crowd tracking her boss. Abedin, Clinton’s longest-serving aide, chatted breezily with acquaintances. But like a mother monitoring her child on the playground, she never let Clinton drift out of her line of sight, ever vigilant and poised to act.


After decades of rope lines — she started working for Clinton as a 19-year-old intern in the First Lady’s office — the role of body woman comes naturally to Abedin, and her hovering presence there, a few feet away from the candidate, is what normal feels like for Clinton.

Some political observers have expressed surprise that after all these years, Abedin is still at it. In 2013, Abedin briefly took a hiatus from Clinton world to try on a different role: supportive campaign spouse, speaking and appearing with her husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, in a video kicking off his New York City mayoral run and campaigning for him in the city. But after Weiner’s bid self-combusted amid sexting revelations, Abedin seemed to pick up right where she left off: gearing up for another tour with Clinton. And another grueling national campaign.

The road is typically a younger staffer’s gig, but there she was on the Chipotle security tape footage, standing next to Clinton as she ordered her now famous burrito bowl on the way to Iowa. When Clinton flew first class from Boston to Washington in April, it was Abedin who sat with the former secretary of state. During a photo shoot with Glamour magazine last summer to promote Clinton’s memoir, “Hard Choices,” Abedin was also on set, making sure the couch was firm enough not to swallow up Clinton, and holding up outfits for her to choose, a source recalled.

Yet Abedin’s early appearances on the trail and book tour fail to capture the larger and growing role she now occupies. Abedin, inside sources said, is weaning herself slowly away from a life on the road to occupy a perch overseeing the campaign operation and serving more often as an independent surrogate for her boss.

When she is on the trail, Abedin has taken on an expansive set of duties. On trips to South Carolina, for instance, which Clinton visited last week to attend the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Abedin has held two private meetings with South Carolina state legislators on her boss’s behalf.

When Clinton got stuck in traffic on her way to a meeting with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio — who since the meeting has refused to endorse her campaign — Abedin met with him one-on-one for 45 minutes before Clinton eventually appeared.

It marks a transformative shift for Abedin, from loyal assistant, more often seen than heard, to campaign power center of her own. “For all intents and purposes, she’s No. 3 on the campaign, after [campaign chairman John] Podesta and [campaign manager Robby] Mook,” explained a Clinton campaign aide.

Her elevation comes as longtime top Clinton aides like Cheryl Mills, Maggie Williams and Philippe Reines have receded in influence and are not functioning as part of the current campaign’s inner circle. Instead, Abedin has been elevated to the most senior member of Clinton’s old guard, and the person filling a role Clinton has always valued: the strong, trusted, female adviser.

Clinton and Abedin, according to top officials who worked with them at the State Department, also share a visible bond that comes from having spent the majority of the past two decades side by side.

“With the miles and days on the road, you become family,” said Phil Gordon, former assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, who worked closely with Abedin at the State Department.“Hillary Clinton has seen her grow over the past 20 years. The two of them have probably spent more time with each other than with their families.”

But part of Abedin’s elevated role in 2016 means giving up some of the proximity to Clinton that for years has been a source of her ever-expanding power in Hillaryland.

In thousands of emails released Tuesday night by the State Department, Abedin’s omnipresent role organizing Clinton’s life was clearly on display: the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke, former Vice President Al Gore, Sen. Chuck Schumer and even former President Bill Clinton all phoned Abedin to reach Clinton. Abedin scheduled Clinton’s hair and medical appointments, knew where Clinton’s physical therapy instructions were to be found, delivered to her the sacred daily briefing book, and enjoyed full access to Clinton, at home or at work.

“Just knock on the door to the bedroom if it’s closed,” Clinton writes to Abedin in one email, when she’s been working and resting at home. Then there’s the instant classic: Abedin coaching an increasingly frustrated Clinton on how to use a fax machine. “Just pick up the phone and hang it up. And leave it hung up,” Abedin commands.

While insiders said that Abedin typically plays just a listening role in policy meetings, the emails show she sometimes weighed in privately on foreign affairs. “I personally think this shows confidence in his position as he’s not worried about an outcry from his fathers’ loyalists,” Abedin wrote to Clinton in 2009, after King Abdullah of Jordan named Prince Hussein the Crown Prince.

But more than any single email, what stood out from the information dump was that Abedin was copied on so much of Clinton’s correspondence.

“At this point, Huma’s role is so important that they are now baking that into the process of the campaign,” said Michael Feldman, a former adviser to Al Gore who has known Abedin for years. “She provides the judgment, perspective and institutional memory that literally can’t be replicated. When you have someone who can be a surrogate not just externally, but internally, that saves a lot of time. It becomes a glue that holds things together.”

Abedin has admitted to associates that she has thought about opportunities outside politics, and at every new stage of Clinton’s career — from Senate to presidential campaign trail to State Department to personal office and then back to the presidential campaign trail — a choice had to be made about where Abedin might fit in. She has acknowledged there is no other politician for whom she would take on a similarly draining role at this point in her life, while she is raising her son. But loyalty, in Hillaryland, begets greater responsibility, which is part of what has kept her there.

“Huma doesn’t need this,” said Tom Nides, a deputy secretary of state under Clinton who remains a trusted adviser. “She could do a whole variety of things. She could make more money, and she could have left a long time ago. She really, really believes in Hillary Clinton.”

It was in the buildup to the 2016 campaign that Abedin’s influence reached a new level. Over the past year and a half, when Clinton was operating out of her personal office, Abedin conducted interviews with all senior campaign staffers, pre-screening them before Clinton did, including candidates on the short list for campaign manager, which included Mook.

“There is no one senior in the campaign that she didn’t have initial meetings with,” said Nides. As the only official channel to Clinton over the past year, Abedin also became the go-to phone call for longtime donors looking for information and access. Last April, after Podesta and Mook were officially on board, they approached Abedin with an idea that she should officially become the campaign’s “vice chair.”

“I was there at the White House when Huma was a young intern, and now she’s an integral part of the team,” Podesta said. “She’s as multi-faceted as she is wicked smart, and when you combine that with her humility and strategic sense, you couldn’t ask for a better colleague.”

As part of the elevated role, Abedin is scheduled to begin headlining fundraisers and speaking in front of donors in the coming weeks, and will likely do more after that, campaign operatives said.

Back at the campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, she has been awarded one of two corner offices with a sweeping view of the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge. About 30 campaign staffers report directly to her, including the teams overseeing the briefing book, scheduling, advance, correspondence, travel and engagement. She also often works in Midtown at the second campaign office, where Clinton keeps her personal office.

Another first for the famously tech-averse Abedin, who consumes most of her news from clips prepared for her each morning — she’s planning the right moment to join Twitter, where she can showcase more of her personality and outside interests, like her love of exotic, spicy food.

For now, Abedin’s few appearances on social media come courtesy of her sister, Heba, who is one of the fundraisers known as “Hillstarters” and often posts pictures from inside Clinton donor events. Last week, Heba Abedin posted a selfie with her sister, backstage at the Lady Gaga fundraiser concert at the Plaza Hotel. It’s some of the limited socializing Huma Abedin has time for, between conference calls that begin at 8 a.m. and often end at 10:30 p.m., and carving out time to spend with her 3-year-old son. On Tuesday, a light day for Abedin, for instance, she conducted 13 calls and attended two of Clinton’s four fundraisers, a spokesman said.

It all represents an elevation from the role Abedin played in 2008, when as traveling chief of staff, longtime Clinton aide Mandy Grunwald compared her to the seemingly clairvoyant character Radar on “M*A*S*H.” “If the air-conditioning is too cold, Huma is there with the shawl,” Grunwald told Vogue at the time, describing Abedin’s role on the campaign.

Abedin told POLITICO that she has different motives for her work this time around.

“Two thousand eight was my first presidential campaign and I was in the middle of the excitement on the road every day,” she said. “Over the course of my time working for HRC, I’ve seen the world and had a lifetime’s worth of experiences. So when people ask me why I choose to continue working for her on this campaign, it’s because I am committed to her.” She added that she is driven by the belief that Clinton is “the best person to be president in the country my son will grow up in” and called her a role model.

At the State Department, the Abedin-Clinton relationship was so close that Congress is looking into whether Abedin received special treatment. While serving as a top adviser for the government, Abedin had a special arrangement that allowed her to also consult for outside clients, like Teneo, a firm started by former Bill Clinton adviser Doug Band, and the Clinton Foundation. Her clients and income from them were not disclosed on her financial report.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is still waiting for a response from the State Department on any communications that Abedin and others might have had with Teneo while she was at State. “Grassley reiterated that request after the revelations of the private email came up,” a spokeswoman for Grassley said.

For Clinton, Abedin’s presence in her inner circle as she takes her final shot at the White House is expected, a reflection of the complete trust that exists between them. “You fly all night, you have a million things to deal with in a small room, you’re not going to be looking your best or feeling your best,” said Gordon of the life of a secretary of state and presidential candidate. “You need total confidentiality. That’s where someone like Huma is indispensable.”

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