Arick Wierson - Political Career

Political Career

In the 1990s, Wierson worked under former Brazilian Finance Minister Rubens Ricúpero and, later, former Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro. In 2001, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg made a personal appeal through his spouse, Fabiana Mesquita-Wierson, then the one ot he top executives in Bloomberg LP's operations in Latin America, to recruit her spouse to New York from Brazil to aid him in his 2001 mayoral campaign. During Bloomberg's initial 2001 election campaign, Wierson headed "Democrats for Bloomberg" initiatives and oversaw the campaign's field operations which combined traditional electioneering and voter profiling databases, which political analysts today say was the campaign that ushered in a new era technically sophisticated, statistical, voter profiling for political operation in the country. Wierson has maintained close political ties in his home state of Minnesota, reestablishing residency in the state in 2009. He is known to be close to maverick political strategist Bill Hillsman, who has asked Wierson to lecture in his courses at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University on several occasions. In June 2010, Brazilian Vice Presidential candidate and Federal Deputy Antônio Pedro de Siqueira Indio da Costa (Democratas (Brasil)) invited Wierson to advise him and Presidential candidate José Serra on media and political matters during the final months of the campaign before the October election. Wierson is said to have declined the invitation due to "ongoing engagements in Angola."