Meet the 21st-Century Political Alchemist Who’s Been Data-Mining for Hillary for the Past Two Years

A deep dive into the modern data-driven campaign with Obama veteran and Ready for Hillary senior strategist Mitch Stewart.
Mitch Stewart in his office in Washington, D.C. 

Mitch Stewart in his office in Washington, D.C. 

Photographer: Christopher Leaman/Bloomberg Business

When Mitch Stewart first became a field organizer, in 2002, it looked like the most anachronistic job a young man could seek out in a 21-century campaign: managing and training volunteers for the work of phone banks and door knocks. At that point, the glamour job in politics was making ads. But now, with big data at the center of modern campaigns, the game is different. Thanks to the availability of information about individuals at a remarkably granular level, along with statistical tools for finding patterns in it, what used to be a matter largely of shoe leather now cranks along with guidance from the most sophisticated analytics anywhere. The 39-year-old Stewart has risen to the highest rank of Democratic operatives by thinking holistically about how those pieces of a modern campaign fit together, and how strategies and budgets need to change accordingly.

A South Dakotan who served as field director for Senator Tom Daschle’s 2004 reelection, in which the minority leader was deposed by John Thune, Stewart became a linchpin of the Obama political apparatus: field director for the 2008 Iowa caucuses; battleground states director for the 2012 reelection. In between, Stewart served as founding director of Organizing for America, the Obama campaign-in-exile at the Democratic National Committee. In 2013, along with fellow Obama field hands Jeremy Bird and Marlon Marshall, Stewart launched 270 Strategies. Arguably the first of the truly new-wave political firms, 270 markets itself to clients inside and outside of electoral politics as a general consultancy equally versed in collecting petition signatures and targeting digital ads.