Originally Posted: August 8, 2016
She’s a spokeswoman who rarely speaks. A political novice helping run one of the most rambunctious, unpredictable presidential campaigns in history. A former model who is almost never in front of a camera. In any other election year a 27-year-old who hadn’t so much as volunteered on a political campaign would not be controlling communications in a presidential contest. But this isn’t any other year.
Meet Hope Hicks, one of the unlikeliest breakout stars of the 2016 campaign. If proximity is power—and in presidential politics it is—Hicks is one of the most powerful people in America. When Donald Trump is on his luxury airplane, she’s the one sitting next to him.
Although Hicks’s parents met while working on Capitol Hill—her mother for a Tennessee Democrat, her father for a Connecticut Republican—politics was not at the forefront of her childhood. She grew up in Greenwich in a tight-knit family. She was a swimmer at Greenwich Country Club and co-captained the lacrosse team at Greenwich High. At age 11 she and her older sister were hired to model for Ralph Lauren. Soon she was in the pages of national magazines and had a cameo on the soap opera Guiding Light. She became the face of the Hourglass Adventures, a series of novels for preteen girls featuring a 10-year-old who travels back in time. (The books have online activities that still feature Hicks; they allow users to dress her up in period costumes from 1889 Paris and 1870 Berlin.)