When then-President Obama awarded California labor chief Dolores Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — one individual was notably absent from the ceremony within the White Home’s East Room: Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
Huerta has recognized Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of the legendary Cesar Chavez, who co-founded the United Farm Employees union with Huerta, since she was an toddler. Chavez Rodriguez was working within the Obama administration on the time, however those that know her stated her absence from the ceremony was not in the least shocking.
President Obama is launched by Julie Chavez Rodriguez earlier than a screening in 2014 of “Cesar Chavez,” a movie about her grandfather and labor chief Cesar Chavez, at
the Outdated Govt Workplace Constructing on White Home grounds.
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Related Press)
“I couldn’t discover Julie as a result of she was busy working. And it’s like, ‘You need to be sitting within the entrance row,’” stated Valerie Jarrett, who served as a senior advisor to Obama. “Nicely, there’s no manner she was going to do something like that. She at all times demurs from the highlight and … has a status for getting issues finished, doing the work, however with none drama and ruffling of feathers, which is fairly extraordinary within the political world.”
This observe file is among the many causes President Biden chosen the 46-year-old Chavez Rodriguez to handle his reelection marketing campaign. And as soon as he determined to not search reelection in July amid mounting considerations about his cognitive abilities and lagging ballot numbers, Chavez Rodriguez — who has a deep, long-standing relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris — was named her presidential marketing campaign supervisor.
Her apply of staying behind the scenes not attainable, Chavez Rodriguez has emerged as a public voice for Harris on points from running-mate choice to frame coverage, and has courted vital voting blocs, comparable to Latinos and working-class residents in battleground states.
“I’ve seen who she’s combating for when she’s within the halls of energy,” Chavez Rodriguez just lately informed a whole lot of Harris supporters at a union corridor in Phoenix. “She fights for households like ours.”
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, then supervisor of President Biden’s reelection marketing campaign, speaks at a information convention in Miami in 2023.
(Lynne Sladky / Related Press)
Her position is a watershed second for a Latina in nationwide politics.
However her increased profile can also be pushed by questions on whether or not some Latino voters, whom Chavez Rodriguez’s household was instrumental in organizing beginning many years in the past in California farm fields, have soured on the Democratic Occasion — and whether or not the celebration can inspire sufficient of them to forged ballots in battleground states comparable to Nevada and Arizona.
“The origin story of the Latino voter actually begins in her bloodline,” stated Mike Madrid, a veteran Latino Republican advisor in California, whose ebook, “The Latino Century,” was printed in June. “Can she be the Chavez who takes this to the subsequent degree and reconfigures it for a brand new age? Or will she be the final of her personal variety and let all of it burn down?”
Sen. Robert F. Kennedy breaks bread with union chief Cesar Chavez as Chavez ends a 25-day quick to help a strike in opposition to grape growers in Delano, Calif., on March 10, 1968.
(Bettmann Archive)
When Biden started his presidency, he chosen a bronze bust of Cesar Chavez to put on a desk within the Oval Workplace behind the Resolute Desk and alongside photos of his family.
To Chavez Rodriguez, her grandfather was “Tata Cesar.” However to the world, the onetime farmworker who died in 1993 was an impassioned labor and civil rights chief whose organizing work with Huerta and nonviolent protests — fasts, strikes and boycotts — led to dramatic enhancements within the lives of farmworkers.
She was nurtured within the UFW headquarters in Central California, and she or he and her cousins joked that her household held pickets as an alternative of picnics.
As an adolescent, Chavez Rodriguez was arrested alongside her dad and mom and sister for urging a boycott of grapes picked by nonunion staff outdoors a New Jersey grocery store.
The identical 12 months, 1988, she fasted in solidarity along with her grandfather to protest the usage of pesticides on desk grapes, and handed out fliers in regards to the challenge to grocery retailer clients in Fresno. What occurred subsequent was an expertise that introduced her the “deepest ache” she had felt in her younger life — and a lesson from her grandfather she by no means forgot.
Chavez Rodriguez, recounting the scene in a 2009 speech at Sonoma State College, stated she handed a flier to an older girl. “I hope he dies this time,” the lady spat.
Julie Chavez Rodriguez joins college students from Los Angeles Worldwide Constitution Excessive Faculty in a march honoring the legacy of her grandfather, labor chief Cesar Chavez, on March 30, 2006, in Eagle Rock.
(Phil McCarten / Related Press)
Offended at herself for not difficult the lady, Chavez Rodriguez went to her grandfather for recommendation. She had needed the lady to really feel the ache she had felt.
Chavez’s reply: “Mija, subsequent time one thing like that occurs to you, you look that individual within the face and also you say, ‘I’m positive that you simply’re in his prayers too.’
“She doesn’t perceive what the farmworkers are going by means of daily,” Chavez continued. In the event you had confronted the lady, he requested, would that basically assist her perceive the problems higher?
After Chavez Rodriguez graduated from Tehachapi Excessive Faculty, she organized strawberry pickers in Watsonville throughout breaks whereas she attended UC Berkeley. After incomes her bachelor’s diploma in Latin American research, she labored at her grandfather’s basis for a number of years.
These experiences, in addition to her tata’s recommendation, outline her life and her activism, Chavez Rodriguez stated.
“There’s no substitute for exhausting work. That was certainly one of his well-known strains, there’s no shortcut, there’s no simple manner out. There’s no like, ‘Oh, if we simply get this one silver bullet, we’re gonna break by means of that,’” she stated in an interview final 12 months. “Simply there’s no substitute for exhausting work.”
However Chavez Rodriguez has steadfastly made a degree of not counting on her title.
“Oftentimes I’d go to Washington, D.C. — I do know lots of people there — I’d inform them Julie is Cesar Chavez’s granddaughter,” Huerta stated. “And folks stated, ‘I by no means knew.’ She by no means used that to advance herself or advance her profession. Julie is a tough employee. That’s what she does.”
Cesar Chavez, proper, with different activists through the 1973 Coachella grape strike.
(Richard Ybarra)
In 2014, when she was serving as Obama’s deputy director of the Workplace of Public Engagement, White Home Chief of Workers Denis McDonough was unaware of Chavez Rodriguez’s lineage till a film was screened there about her grandfather.
Chavez Rodriguez had volunteered for Obama’s 2008 presidential marketing campaign in Colorado. After he gained the White Home, she was employed first as his director of youth employment after which as deputy press secretary to Inside Secretary Ken Salazar.
She then turned the White Home’s deputy director of public engagement, initially centered on immigration and Latino voters. Her portfolio was expanded to incorporate outreach to Asian Individuals, Muslims, veterans, the LGBTQ+ group and others. Then, Chavez Rodriguez was appointed as a particular assistant to the president.
A Democratic ally, who requested anonymity to talk candidly, stated that because the administration’s stance on border management turned extra aggressive — immigrant rights activists known as Obama the deporter in chief — Chavez Rodriguez steadily needed to take care of the fallout.
“It was Julie coping with the ire of Democrats and immigration teams not happy with the way it in the end transpired,” this individual stated.
President Biden and First Girl Jill Biden hear as Julie Chavez Rodriguez speaks on the Biden for President 2024 marketing campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., in February 2024. Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and Vice President Kamala Harris additionally joined them onstage.
(Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Photographs)
Extra just lately, whereas below fireplace from Republicans who accused Democrats of permitting the southern border to descend into chaos, the Biden administration pursued harder insurance policies on border enforcement and asylum. Madrid, the GOP advisor, stated he was impressed by the Democrats’ newfound embrace of border management — and Chavez Rodriguez is a part of that shift.
“In the event you had informed me three months in the past that the Democratic nominee can be main the marketing campaign cost with probably the most conservative border safety platform because the Nineteen Eighties, I’d’ve by no means believed you,” Madrid stated. “Nevertheless it’s the place the voters are at, together with Latino voters, and her management on shifting away from the failing political platform of the previous has been masterful.”
(Her grandfather’s historical past on immigration is difficult. He opposed unlawful immigration and even inspired union members to report undocumented staff to immigration authorities. Chavez’s defenders say his motivation was to drive out nonunion strikebreakers.)
In 2016, after Harris was elected to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer, she named Chavez Rodriguez her state director. The next 12 months, she started working for Harris’ unsuccessful 2020 presidential marketing campaign. After Harris dropped out of the race, Chavez Rodriguez was employed by Biden’s marketing campaign as a senior advisor overseeing Latino outreach.
Everybody noticed Julie as type of this drive of nature
— Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Lengthy Seashore)
“Everybody noticed Julie as type of this drive of nature,” stated Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Lengthy Seashore), a longtime pal. He recalled that when she was a member of Harris’ Senate employees and he was mayor of Lengthy Seashore, they labored collectively to safe federal funding for the town.
After Biden took workplace, Chavez Rodriguez turned director of the White Home Workplace of Intergovernmental Affairs after which senior advisor to the president earlier than she was named because the supervisor of his reelection marketing campaign.
As that bid started to battle, Biden shifted two prime White Home aides — Jen O’Malley Dillon and Mike Donilon — to take management of his marketing campaign, although Chavez Rodriguez remained the marketing campaign supervisor.
One key concern was Biden’s standing amongst folks of colour, notably Latinos. When Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee, Chavez Rodriguez stated that whereas Latinos overwhelmingly supported the Democratic ticket in 2020, the celebration wanted to shore up the group’s help, notably amongst Latino males.
“We’re gonna need to proceed to work exhausting to maintain that base as sturdy as it’s,” she stated. “And particularly on this second, the place — and I’ll communicate simply primarily based alone expertise — the place this form of sense of machismo is taking root in ways in which I believe have grow to be, or which have penetrated politics in a manner that has enabled voters to vote in opposition to their very own pursuits at occasions.”
Polls present that public security, training and financial points comparable to inflation, together with immigration, are main considerations amongst Latinos.
Inner marketing campaign polling reveals that Chavez Rodriguez’s job could have gotten simpler, with early polling suggesting that Harris fares higher amongst Latino voters than Biden.
Harris topped Biden and Trump in favorability amongst Latinos in a ballot of voters in seven battleground states carried out earlier than the president introduced he wouldn’t search reelection. Her strongest benefit over Biden was amongst youthful Latinos, based on a memo of the ballot by BSP Analysis that was first reported by the Hill.
In a ballot launched Aug. 6, 58% of Latinos stated they might help Harris, 7 proportion factors greater than final month, based on an NPR/PBS Information/Marist ballot of 1,613 adults carried out Aug. 1-4. That’s 7 factors fewer than the portion of the Latino vote Biden gained in 2020.
However the ballot was carried out in the brand new Harris marketing campaign’s early days, earlier than she selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her operating mate and their stumping in Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Voto Latino, a nonprofit co-founded by actor Rosario Dawson, had already introduced that it plans to spend $44 million this 12 months turning out younger Latino voters in battleground states and in key races. The group noticed a 221% improve in voter registration within the aftermath of Harris saying her candidacy, Maria Teresa Kumar, the group’s president, informed NPR.
“We have been registering 60 to 100 voters a day from January till the Friday earlier than Biden stepped down,” Kumar stated. “On Monday with Kamala Harris because the potential nominee, we have been registering 3,000 people a day. By Friday, we have been as much as 8,100.”
Garcia, who served on Biden’s 2024 nationwide marketing campaign management committee, stated that he was at all times assured about Chavez Rodriguez’s capability to mobilize Latino voters.
“When folks ask, ‘How can we do Latino technique?’ I’m like, ‘We’ve received Julie. We’ve received Julie Chavez Rodriguez on the prime. I’ve each confidence she understands the group higher than anybody,” he stated. “Apart from the actual fact she’s a badass and a tough employee, she symbolizes that motion, which I believe is highly effective as nicely.”
This month, the political motion committee of the League of United Latin American Residents, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group, endorsed Harris. It was the primary time LULAC had endorsed a presidential candidate in its 95-year historical past.
Nonetheless, it’s clear that Harris’ marketing campaign is cognizant of potential weak point on this voting bloc. In late July, comic George Lopez and Sen. Alex Padilla of California headlined a name centered on Latino males.
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, then the White Home intergovernmental affairs director, is proven outdoors the White Home in 2021. She left that publish to guide Biden’s reelection marketing campaign.
(Evan Vucci / Related Press)
“Harris has been searching for us and our shot on the American dream,” Padilla stated, based on the Miami Herald. He was appointed to Harris’ Senate seat after she was turned vp, and within the 2022 turned the first California Latino to be elected to the chamber. “She’s received our again. She at all times will.”
The group Chavez Rodriguez’s grandfather based endorsed Harris instantly after Biden introduced he wouldn’t search reelection. She had beforehand accepted the group’s endorsement of Biden final 12 months at Muranaka Farms in Moorpark, the place her father gained a contract for area staff within the Nineties.
“I’m a product of the farmworker legacy that we see behind me right now,” she stated on the time. “I can’t be extra proud and honored to work with them to prepare to ensure that we’re reminding each voter on this nation what’s at stake on this election.”
As for the Democratic Nationwide Conference beginning this week,it’s unclear what public position Chavez Rodriguez will play. However even when she’s earlier than the general public greater than previously, little doubt she’ll nonetheless be within the background, working.
