The Julie Chávez Rodriguez Interview: "A real opportunity for the future"
On the eve of the debate, the Harris Walz campaign manager on what this moment means, and where we go from here.
Welcome back to Power Breakers from Square One, the interview series where every other week, we’ll bring you a conversation on the people and ideas that matter in this election cycle and beyond. We’ll make you think. We’ll make you question. We’ll make you hope.
A campaign manager is an impossible job to define because it genuinely changes from day to day. At any given time, you’re being asked to weigh in on high-level decisions, mediate disputes between departments, make sure the candidate got dinner, speak on behalf of the campaign, fundraise, make sure no one is getting sued, and basically help solve whatever the crisis of the day is so that it won’t distract from the crisis of tomorrow.
It’s the best job I’ve ever had.
When Julie Chávez Rodriguez was named campaign manager for the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, I’m not embarrassed to admit I fangirled pretty hard. Julie is an incredible leader, a brilliant strategist, and an inspiring public servant with an activist spirit and a keen ability to get things done. She was the right choice for the moment, and her presence on the campaign genuinely excited me.
Then when Vice President Harris became the nominee, and the campaign shifted gears overnight, I wasn’t able to able to stop thinking about Julie.
Talk about a job changing from day-to-day.
But they didn’t miss a step. This campaign team has been really amazing to watch. The vibes have been immaculate. Their social media presence, their humor, their empathy, and the joy that they are bringing back to politics is infectious. And it has transformed this race in a fundamental way. And since Julie spent our conversation gushing about her team and her boss, I’m going to take a moment to gush about her. Because the game-changing race that this team is running flows from game-changing leadership leading the campaign.
It’s been inspiring to see, and even more so when I think about all the people — especially the women, and especially the women of color — who are watching this race and thinking that could be me. The next generation of women who are going to run for office — and those that will run their campaigns — are watching this cycle and seeing themselves reflected a little more clearly in their politics and in this process.
I was so excited to get to talk to Julie about the next 55 days, the future of Democratic politics, and what she hopes voters are learning about the Vice President.
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Maya Rupert: It always amazes me how little public understanding there really is for what a campaign manager does. I won’t ask you what you do on “a typical day” because I know that’s an impossible question. But can you just talk a little bit about what the job is, and where are your biggest priorities right now?
Julie Chávez Rodriguez: Yeah. Well, first, the job is about building a team that can scale in all the right ways that we need across our battleground states and here in headquarters so that we can make sure that we have multiple pathways to 270 open. As you know, 270 electoral votes is our north star when you're running a presidential campaign. And so just really making sure we have the kind of resources, the leadership, and now the infrastructure that we need to win.
In this moment, I'm really focused on those still key moments that we need to drive towards between now and November to make sure that we are defining who the Vice President is, laying out the choice in this election, and making sure that we are reminding folks of how dangerous Donald Trump is and will be in a second term.
And at the same time, really painting the Vice President's vision for the future. We know that it's not enough to rely on historic accomplishments from the Biden Harris administration. Nor is it enough to just draw a contrast with Donald Trump. We have to do both those things and make sure that we're painting a vision for our voters where they see themselves, and they see a real opportunity for the future.
So, as a campaign manager, my job is about bringing all those pieces together and making sure that we have the systems, the structure, the organization, and the resources to do it all and to scale exponentially. For me, that's been the most awe-inspiring part of being in this role. To see the leaders that we've brought in early on grow, and to see what they've now been able to create and accomplish together.
Right now we are in the fight for our lives, and so every single minute, every day, every dollar matters at this moment. And I just can't think of a better, more effective team to be able to bring this home.
MR: That's incredible. And you talked about scaling, but obviously there ended up being a need to scale quickly that there was no way to anticipate. We were thrown into a unique situation. We got a new candidate, got her nominated, pulled off a spectacular convention, and then it’s been off and running. That took a massive scaling up of infrastructure. When you first heard the announcement that Biden was ending his campaign, what was the first “we need to solve that” priority that popped into your mind?
JCR: Well, it wasn't even so much immediately thinking, what do I need to solve? It was actually just being able to bear witness to the most incredible political and public servant leadership that I've seen in my lifetime. Because it is rare to see someone in the position that President Biden was in put country first. We don't see that often. I think that oftentimes, people talk about service in that way. But to see public service really carried out and lived in the ways that he did, it really brought so much leadership to the moment. That to me was truly inspiring. And then immediately to have him endorse the Vice President — I couldn't have been more grateful.
Because the first question was OK, what does this mean? But that was only maybe, 10-15 minutes, though I’m sure it felt longer. But then we were able to shift into the next phase of our campaign, and to be honest, that's really how we absorbed it. As a team, as an organization — it just felt like the next phase. And we were able to quickly turn on some of the core mechanics — everything from logos to trying to figure out a running mate process, and all of these other pieces in between. But also prioritizing making sure that the team was intact. So having the Vice President come to headquarters that very next day to say that this is the team that got us here and this is the team that's gonna take us forward, and to really make the transition seamless, just set us on the course that we needed to be on.
So that made sure we didn’t miss a beat, and continued to build and scale at the same rate that we needed to. And yes, we flipped a convention and rolled out a running mate, and did all that in six weeks, which is hard to believe. But it really is just a testament to the leadership at the very inception, first from the President, to the Vice President, and then across our entire organization, down to the organizers on the door. It's been truly, truly incredible to witness.
MR: That's awesome. And I mean, look, I feel like we're getting to see that from a distance. Just the incredible momentum that has followed this campaign, and one of the coolest things I've experienced is talking to so many people who feel hope. People feel excited and it feels different. Both the Vice President and Governor Walz have talked a lot about reinjecting joy into our politics. And I think that is a very powerful and valuable resource that a campaign can have. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how you sort of take that joy and translate it to strategy?
JCR: Yeah, it's a great question. I think what we saw out of the box was the electricity and energy at these rallies. I had a chance to actually go to the Phoenix rally, which I think was the largest of all of them, followed by a very tight second with the Las Vegas rally that I also had a chance to see. But it really was electric in the room.
To see thousands of folks come out in Las Vegas where it was 107 degrees outside, and folks were standing in line just to show up and to be able to show their support, was really incredible. And it was the coalition that elected us in 2020. That's what I saw in the crowds. I saw young people. I saw families. I saw Black voters, Latino voters, AAPI voters. I saw so many moms and dads just realizing that they wanted to be a part of this moment. And that there was something that was happening in our country that was bigger than themselves, and that they wanted to both bear witness to, but also wanted their children to bear witness to it. And I haven't seen that since, honestly, since some of the early Obama organizing, where people saw that sense of personal agency that they could make a difference; that them showing up mattered. And that’s what, to me, is critical.
Now, how do we turn that into organizing? I mean, we shifted a lot of folks coming out of those rallies to make sure we were capturing that energy immediately, and that's where I couldn't be more grateful for my team and for the organization that we built. Because we did have the net to be able to capture that energy. We had the organization. We had the ability to start to turn those rally-goers into volunteers and are finding new and exciting ways to plug them into our campaign over these next 55 days.
MR: You alluded to something that I've been thinking about a lot. You said you really saw the sort of coalition that helped us win in Nevada in 2020. Do you feel like we are seeing the real birth of a new set of battleground states in this race and an illustration of the coalition future Democratic candidates are going to need to build in order to win? And what is that coalition?
JCR: Yeah. Well, early on in the campaign we saw our core seven battleground states as the blue wall — what we think would be the easiest path — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and with Nebraska, too, our little blue dot up there, and also the Sun Belt States — Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia. We wanted to make sure that we were investing across the board, building the teams that we needed, and bringing in the kind of leadership we needed in the states. And that's another thing I'm really proud of: We were able to bring in folks that have run and won statewide races in all of our battleground states because we knew this was going to be different than past Presidentials. Yes, it's a national campaign. Yes, it's a Presidential campaign. But we knew that we needed to run state-based campaigns in each of our battlegrounds. Arizona is very different than Michigan is very different than North Carolina is very different than Georgia. And for me, it's about making sure that we had the right kind of leadership, and building out the teams. In fact, we actually just had our state leadership teams here in Wilmington over this past weekend to do one final retreat as we go off to execute against those plans.
There is a really exciting opportunity that we have in states like Arizona and Nevada and Georgia, where we also won statewide races in 2022 and we won them in 2020, so we know it's possible. North Carolina is one state where I’d say we’re bullish about this cycle, in a way we were bullish about Arizona last cycle. In 2020, we only lost North Carolina by 1.3 percentage points.
And there is a gubernatorial race there with a guy that makes Herschel Walker look reasonable. He is just the most extreme candidate that we have seen on the ballot, and so it enables us to run a really strong coordinated effort there with the Democratic candidate, Josh Stein, and make sure we're just leveraging resources because it's not it's not a cheap state to run in. But we're excited about the team we have on the ground and the work we're also doing in the rural counties. We know we're probably not going to win these rural counties, but if we can drive down the margins that can make the difference in a state like North Carolina.
MR: You all also just made a really important announcement that you made a significant investment in down ballot races. In my last interview for Power Breakers, I got a chance to talk to Lala Wu of Sister District, who is doing incredible work, and they are hyper-focused on down ballot victories and why this kind of investment from the top of the ticket is so critical. Can you talk a little bit about the strategy?
JCR: Definitely. I'd say, it started with President Biden and Vice President Harris as they were coming into the White House. They knew that they weren't just leading the country, that they were also leading the party. And so what we saw during the midterm elections was, again, historic investment in down ballot races — House and Senate, of course, but also really looking at opportunities to invest in the DLCC, the DGA, and other committees. Because we want to make sure that we're doing our part to support Democrats at every level. We know that it takes all of us. I mean, we've seen the impact that state legislatures have had on so many of the critical issues that we've been fighting for, whether it's reproductive rights — as we've seen that gutted, especially after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
But beyond that, just from an implementation standpoint, I saw what we were able to do with the Biden Harris Administration with a cohort of Democratic governors. We were able to do so much during the American Rescue Plan and implementation of infrastructure legislation. So all of that matters to make sure that we have the kind of leadership across our country — in Congress and in our states — to be able to deliver for the American people.
MR: I want to shift a bit from tactics and strategy and just talk a little bit about this particular moment in our political history, because when President Biden did make his enormous and unbelievable sacrifice, we not only went from an incumbent president as our nominee, but we also went from a model of President that we are used to seeing — an older, white man — to a potentially history making candidate in Vice President Harris. What did that mean for you personally?
JCR: Personally, I've had the opportunity to work with the Vice President since she was Senator of California. And I have been able to see, up close and personal, just who she's fighting for, and what her values are. I’ve been able to see what motivates her, the kind of issues that she cares about. There have been so many times when I was awed by her. I remember one time, just being in prep, and we were working through how to talk about what it means to be $400 shy of potentially going bankrupt. And she said, “Let's make that tangible for someone. What costs $400? A flat tire. So say that you're driving down these beat up roads because Trump hasn't passed infrastructure, and all of a sudden you get a flat tire. And now you have a $400 expense that you weren't expecting. What is that gonna do to you and your family? How is that gonna impact your ability to put food on the table or to pay rent?” She is always trying to get down to the practical things of what we need to do to make people's lives just a little better, to make sure that they have the ability, as she oftentimes says, to not just get by, but to get ahead. And that is so core to who she is, to how she was raised, and I could not be more proud to see her step into this role with such power, authenticity, and strength. In a moment where it matters most.
MR: That's awesome. She's really great at taking the policy issues and not making them feel wonky, and making them feel so connected to people.
JCR: Totally. Yeah. It's a little bit of her superpower.
MR: So for our last question, I want to turn to what is on everyone’s mind right now — the debate. On the eve of the debate, what is the message that you're really hoping that undecided voters who are listening take away from this moment?
JCR: I am hoping that they will really understand that the Vice President is someone who's fighting for us, for our families, for everyday people. And Donald Trump is someone who's fighting for himself. He's putting forward Project 2025, which is a blueprint for an administration that would exert more control over Americans' everyday lives. We should believe Donald Trump when he says that he's going to be a dictator on day one. We should believe him when he outlines plans to ban abortion, to erect mass deportation camps, to end the Department of Education, and to take away the independence of the Department of Justice.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
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