Senior adviser to President Joe Biden, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a former campaign staffer for then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, was floated on Sunday as a potential campaign manager for Biden’s 2024 likely reelection bid.
Rodriguez, who is of hispanic heritage, could become Biden’s 2024 campaign manager, three people familiar with the ongoing deliberations told CBS News.
Rodriguez’s rise in Democrat politics could place her at the center of the 2024 presidential campaign cycle. According to media reports, Biden might announce a 2024 presidential bid on Tuesday at Camp David with Hunter Biden near his side.
Rodriguez worked for the Obama administration and later become integral to then-Sen. Kamala Harris’ California operation as state director in 2016. From 2017 to 2019, she served on Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign as a senior adviser for hispanic outreach. Upon Harris’ earlier exit from the 2020 race, Rodriguez joined the Biden administration as the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. In 2022, she was promoted to senior advisor to the president.
File/President Barack Obama is introduced by Julie Chavez Rodriguez before the screening of the film ‘Cesar Chavez’, Wednesday, March 19, 2014, in the Old Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington. Rodriguez is granddaughter of the Mexican-American labor leader Chavez and currently works in the Obama Administration as Deputy Director of Public Engagement. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Biden has struggled with hispanic support throughout his presidency, throwing in doubt whether the increasingly conservative voting bloc will support his candidacy. Selecting Rodriguez would signal an acknowledgment of Biden’s plight with the demographic.
If appointed, Rodriguez will run the day-to-day operations from the campaign, which will either be located at Biden’s Wilmington home or Philadelphia, people familiar with the coordination told CBS News.
Rodriguez would also coordinate with Biden’s senior team, including Mike Donilon, Anita Dunn, Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti, Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients, and Deputy Chief of Staff Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who managed Biden’s 2020 campaign, along with former chief of staff Ron Klain and former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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