Former Weiner Intern Says Staffers Joined Campaign To Meet Huma Abedin, Angle For Hillary 2016 Jobs

Former Weiner Intern: Staffers Joined Campaign To Meet Huma Abedin, Angle For Hillary 2016 Jobs

Olivia Nuzzi -- a one-time intern for Anthony Weiner's quixotic mayoral campaign who has rather seamlessly transformed into a regular purveyor of fly-on-the-wall scooplets about it -- saves her smirkiest anecdote for the New York Daily News. Apparently, not all of her fellow Weiner interns were necessarily down for the campaign's "bromides for the middle class" cause. Rather, they were playing a longer game. Per Nuzzi:

Their hope was to make a connection with Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, and thus forge a potential connection to her longtime boss, Hillary Clinton, to get an inside track for a campaign position if she ran for president in 2016.

This is how [junior staffer Clay Adam Wade] explained it to me:

“I had followed Anthony’s career for a few years pre-scandal, and when the opportunity came up I decided to apply to work on his second bid for mayor,” he said. “After having started working on the campaign, while still committed to his cause, my motive began to change.”

He continued, “I thought if I could only ride this out to the very end, perhaps I could network with Ms. Abedin and, in a few years, secure myself a spot in Secretary Clinton’s all-but-certain bid for the presidency. It was a-once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

It's an interesting theory. A future Hillary Clinton campaign might be amenable to hiring the people who helped a man who Clinton, by all accounts, despises if Abedin was suitably impressed. It's certainly in keeping with the traditional careerist mindset of contemporary American politics.

But there were obvious flaws in the plan. As Nuzzi relates, Abedin was "rarely seen around the office." You know, except for those periodic Sexting Press Conference days, during which it might have been awkward to get a resume into Abedin's hands.

Another flaw in the plan is that Weiner is terrible. Nuzzi re-relates a story she'd previously penned about Weiner's propensity for calling the female interns "Monica," which one would imagine was pretty discomfiting to all of those young Hillary 2016 wannabes.

Still, you have to play your angles! I guess now that the Weiner For Mayor campaign is essentially dunzo, most of those interns hoping to catch on with a Hillary 2016 campaign will have to rely on a fallback strategy, like making a seven-figure donation to the Clinton Global Initiative.

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