US President Joseph Biden is about to formally proclaim his intention to run for re-election, and his campaign has a new leader.
Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a senior White House adviser, will serve as the president’s 2024 campaign manager, according to US media reports on Sunday.
Mr. Biden, 80, has delayed formally announcing his campaign but could do so this week.
Here’s all you need to know about the lady in charge of his most recent campaign.
- Well-known ancestors
Ms Rodriguez is the granddaughter of Cesar Chavez and Helen Fabela Chavez, both labor activists.
César Chavez, a Mexican-American civil-rights activist who worked to better farm laborers’ working and living circumstances in the 1960s and 1970s, is revered in organized labor and leftist groups.
Mr. Biden has proudly placed a bronze bust of Chavez on his desk in the Oval Office since his first day in office.
Chavez’s son Paul privately loaned him the bust.
Ms Rodriguez and First Lady Jill Biden planted a commemorative Cesar Chavez Rose in the White House Rose Garden last month.
- Arrested when still a young activist
Ms Rodriguez has frequently stated that she was an activist from a young age.
She was raised in California’s Central Valley and attended the University of California – Berkeley as a youngster, where she attended demonstrations and did community outreach, carrying on her grandfather’s struggle for farm laborers.
According to the New York Times, Ms Rodriguez was jailed once while distributing pamphlets about pesticide concerns outside a local store during a demonstration. At the moment, she was nine years old.
“I was introduced to organizing at such a young age, both as a skill set and as an ethos,” she told Bustle magazine in 2020.
- Working for President Barack Obama
César Chavez created the United Farm Workers labor group in 1862, and its rallying cry became “Si se puede,” which translates loosely to “Yes we can.” That statement became one of Barack Obama’s key campaign slogans throughout his 2008 presidential campaign.
Ms Rodriguez made her first excursion into Washington politics during the Obama administration, after eight years as the program director at her grandfather’s eponymous foundation.
She began her career in the US Department of the Interior before moving on to the White House’s office of public engagement and eventually becoming President Obama’s special assistant.
- Connections to Kamala Harris
Ms Rodriguez has worked for a number of prominent Democrats, including President Barack Obama.
She joined Kamala Harris’s campaign for the open US Senate seat in California in late 2016.
Ms Rodriguez also served as the campaign’s national political director and then as a traveling chief of staff when Ms Harris started her 2020 presidential bid.
Questions have been expressed about Mr Biden’s elderly age, and Ms Harris remains the Democrat most likely to succeed him as vice president.
- A Latina in the Oval Office
Since 2020, Ms Rodriguez has worked for Joe Biden.
She was hired as the director of the White House’s office of intergovernmental relations after serving as a senior counselor directing Latino voter engagement during his presidential campaign.
She was promoted to senior advisor to the president before of the 2022 midterm elections, making her the highest-ranking Hispanic in the building.
It comes as some Democrats are concerned that the party is losing support among Latino voters in several key states.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, who ran Mr Biden’s successful 2020 campaign and currently works as his deputy chief of staff, was picked over Ms Rodriguez for the position of campaign manager. She also defeated Mr. Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who formerly ran his political campaigns.
