When then-President Obama awarded California labor leader Dolores Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor — one person was notably absent from the ceremony in the White House’s East Room: Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
Huerta has known Chavez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of the legendary Cesar Chavez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Huerta, since she was an infant. Chavez Rodriguez was working in the Obama administration at the time, but those who know her said her absence from the ceremony was not the least bit surprising.
President Obama is introduced by Julie Chavez Rodriguez before a screening in 2014 of “Cesar Chavez,” a film about her grandfather and labor leader Cesar Chavez, at
the Old Executive Office Building on White House grounds.
(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)
“I couldn’t find Julie because she was busy working. And it’s like, ‘You should be sitting in the front row,’” said Valerie Jarrett, who served as a senior advisor to Obama. “Well, there’s no way she was going to do anything like that. She always demurs from the spotlight and … has a reputation for getting things done, doing the work, but without any drama and ruffling of feathers, which is pretty extraordinary in the political world.”
This track record is among the reasons President Biden selected the 46-year-old Chavez Rodriguez to manage his reelection campaign. And once he decided to not seek reelection in July amid mounting concerns about his cognitive skills and lagging poll numbers, Chavez Rodriguez — who has a deep, long-standing relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris — was named her presidential campaign manager.
Her practice of staying behind the curtain no longer possible, Chavez Rodriguez has emerged as a public voice for Harris on issues from running-mate selection to border policy, and has courted critical voting blocs, such as Latinos and working-class residents in battleground states.
“I’ve seen who she’s fighting for when she’s in the halls of power,” Chavez Rodriguez recently told hundreds of Harris supporters at a union hall in Phoenix. “She fights for families like ours.”
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, then manager of President Biden’s reelection campaign, speaks at a news conference in Miami in 2023.
(Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)
Her role is a watershed moment for a Latina in national politics.
But her higher profile is also driven by questions about whether some Latino voters, whom Chavez Rodriguez’s family was instrumental in organizing starting decades ago in California farm fields, have soured on the Democratic Party — and whether the party can motivate enough of them to cast ballots in battleground states such as Nevada and Arizona.
“The origin story of the Latino voter literally begins in her bloodline,” said Mike Madrid, a veteran Latino Republican consultant in California, whose book, “The Latino Century,” was published in June. “Can she be the Chavez who takes this to the next level and reconfigures it for a new age?