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Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images.
Biden announces reelection. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images.

President Biden is running it back in 2024. Meet the Chavez legacy led campaign team that will need Pennsylvania’s votes for victory

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President Joe Biden officially announced his 2024 run — ending months of speculation regarding his future— in a three-minute video posted to Twitter on Tuesday, April 25, setting up a potential rematch against Donald Trump on the presidential campaign trail. 

A rematch between the two presidential nominees would be the first time that’s occurred in over 60 years — 1956 — when Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson for the second consecutive time. 

Biden — currently the U.S.’s oldest ever active President — would be 86 at the end of his second term should he be victorious again, with Trump, 76, not surpassing Biden’s 82 when his current term ends. 

In a video announcement titled “Freedom,” Biden warned the American people of the threats that another Donald Trump presidency would invite — particularly those concerning democracy — citing the infamous attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, under the leadership of former President Trump who denied his loss in the race. 

The video opens with multiple images of the Jan. 6 insurrection in which swaths of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol Building. 

In a voiceover, Biden says the “fight for our democracy” has “been the work of my first term,” but that the work has to continue in order to combat the right-wing extremist actions that Trump’s platform and rhetoric inspire. 

“Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on those bedrock freedoms,” Biden said. “When I ran for President four years ago, I said we were in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are.” 

“Cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. Dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love. All while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote,” he added. 

Biden’s announcement ended all the speculation regarding his future and the incumbent faces a clear path to the Democratic nomination barring any party breakaways 

After months of repeatedly and consistently expressing his intentions to run for a second term, Biden’s commitment allows his team to assemble the campaign organization’s overall structure and start to raise funds. 

For Biden, this is now his fourth time running for the Oval Office, and possibly his last ever campaign that could end an over 50-year career in national politics. He spent 36 years as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, eight years as vice president and ran campaigns for the White House in 1988, 2008 and 2020. 

As President, he spent the first two years of his term working with small partisan margins in the U.S. House, but was still able to come through on several large legislative victories, including a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package; a $1 trillion program to rebuild roads, highways, airports and other infrastructure; and major investments to combat climate change, lower prescription drug costs for seniors, that some passed with Republican votes.

This go-round, Biden faces the task of connecting with even younger and more progressive voters while keeping his strong consistent base of followers. 

He'll also have to convince voters in Pennsylvania — one of the biggest battleground states — of his policy accomplishments — such as the diversification of the nation’s federal courts — are worthy enough of a second term. 

Similar to 2020, the race will also likely be decided by one of several swing states in the U.S., including Biden’s home state of Pennsylvania. 

Ahead of Biden’s announcement on Tuesday, Trump released a lengthy and scathing statement aimed at the current President. 

“You could take the five worst presidents in American history, and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our Nation in just a few short years. Not even close,” Trump said before hitting at the current president over socialism, spending and inflation.

Who’s running the campaign? 

Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Campaign Manager 

Longtime Democratic advisor and granddaughter of well-known Latino labor leader Cesar Chavez and labor activist Helen Fabela Chavez, will lead her first Presidential campaign and would be the first Latina to win as a campaign manager should the race go Biden’s way in 2024. 

A member of the Obama White House for his two-consecutive terms from 2008 to 2016, she initially worked for the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and later in the White House Office of Public Engagement as deputy director of public engagement and later served as Special Assistant to President Obama. 

She was then appointed by then-Senator Kamala Harris as state director in 2016 before serving as the traveling chief of staff on Vice President Harris' unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, before joining the Biden campaign team as deputy campaign manager. 

Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Biden elevated Chavez Rodriguez to be a senior advisor to the president, a senior staff position serving as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. A longtime Democratic aide, she’s currently the highest ranking Latina in the White House.  

Quentin Fulks, Principal Deputy Campaign Manager

Democratic strategist Fulks was poached from the recent winning campaign for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection campaign in 2022, which was notably the first successful reelection bid for a Democratic senator in Georgia in more than 30 years. 

He previously served as deputy campaign manager and senior political adviser to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2018. 

Kevin Muñoz, Media Relations

Muñoz was most recently the assistant White House press secretary, and in media relations, will now oversee press for the reelection bid as a larger team is created. 

National Co-chairs

Rep. Lisa Blunt-Rochester (D-Del.) 

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.)

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) 

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.)

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) 

Jeffrey Katzenberg

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer