Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is being managed by labor icon Cesar Chavez’s granddaughter – who is so steeped in his protest politics that she was arrested aged 9 for picketing a supermarket.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, 45, escaped prosecution for the May 1988 arrest outside an A&P supermarket in Passaic, New Jersey.

She, her sister Olivia and parents Arturo Rodriguez and Linda Chavez, were taken into custody, accused of harassing customers.

The family had moved to Jersey from their native California but continued the campaign for a boycott of grapes picked by non-union workers which was led by Chavez.

And while the charge was dropped, Rodriguez highlighted the arrest to the New York Times in an interview talking up her political bona fides.

Months later, The Bergen Record reported in 1988, 10-year-old Julie fasted for three days while her grandfather fasted for 36 to highlight his pro-union cause – his last public fast, and one which probably caused the health problems which killed him in 1993.

Now she is heading up President Biden and Vice President Harris’ reelection campaign in her most high-profile role.

“To win this fight, we need strong leadership that can build and expand our broad, diverse coalition from 2020,” Biden said Tuesday as he launched his campaign and unveiled Rodriguez and her principal deputy, Quentin Fulks.

“Julie and Quentin are trusted, effective leaders that know the stakes of this election and will bring their knowledge and energy to managing a campaign that reaches all Americans.”

Democrats, however, were sufficiently concerned that the appointment reeked of nepotism that Cecilia Munoz, who led the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs under President Obama, told the Associated Press that while “being a Chavez is part of who she is,” Rodriguez got the campaign role job “because she is so skilled and has such deep integrity.”

Rodriguez is a third-generation activist whose family ties to the very top of the Democrats go back to the 1960s when her grandfather and Robert F. Kennedy campaigned side-by-side.

Her father, Arturo Rodriguez, led the United Farm Workers of America after Chavez died in 1993, and her mother Linda Chavez, who died in 2000, worked for it too.

Rodriguez was brought up at its headquarters in Keene, California, and her first job after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley was working for eight years at the Cesar E. Chavez Foundation, rising to director of programs, her White House biography shows.

“He was both a role model but also a hero,” Rodriguez told KNTV of her grandfather. “I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to get to grow up with him and see him in action, ride alongside him, and march alongside him in so many ways.”

Her first job outside the family union was with Barack Obama’s White House, and she then went to work for Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign, before joining Biden’s.

Chavez became an icon of the progressive wing of the Democratic party, after founding the United Farm Works. He appeared alongside RFK, his brother Teddy, California Governor Jerry Brown and the Rev. Jesse Jackson as he led strikes and boycotts in his home state of California, then nationally.

He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, a year after his death, by then-President Clinton while President Obama declared a national Cesar Chavez day in 2014.

Biden has made reverence for Chavez – like him, a devout Catholic from the social justice wing of the faith – a hallmark of his presidency, putting a bust of the activist in the Oval Office – although it is not clear that the two ever met, despite the president’s long political career.

At the time Rodriguez’s uncle, Paul Chavez, told The Washington Post: “To us, it was an affirmation of the importance and the contributions of our community, immigrants and Latinos.”

Rodriguez herself told the Associated Press in 2021 that Biden supported Chavez’s advocacy of farm workers: “I think there’s that sort of shared history and shared … support for the cause that he was leading.”

But Chavez’s legacy does not easily map onto the current Democratic party. He opposed illegal immigration, claiming it was used to suppress wages. And his serial infidelity to his wife Helena, with whom he had eight children, has been highlighted by critics.

In her new role Rodriguez will have to boost Latino support of Biden, 80, who has struggled with the demographic.

He won Latinos 59-38 against Donald Trump in 2020 – a far slimmer margin than Hillary Clinton, who beat Trump among Hispanic voters 66 to 28 – and lost support badly in Miami, Florida, and the Texas border region.

Nathalie Rayes, president and CEO of the Latino Victory Fund, a progressive political action committee, said: “This is a signal that President Biden is not taking the Latino community for granted.”

Rodriguez will also be seen as a bridge to union support, critical to Biden in swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Several prominent unions on Tuesday endorsed Biden’s reelection, including the Amalgamated Transit Union and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

But Critics of Rodriguez’s selection, including Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, accused the Biden-Harris team of living in generations past.

“This is not a person who speaks about the future,” Gonzalez told The Post Tuesday. “This is a person that represents the past. It’s like they’re stuck in the late 60s.”

Rodriguez’s selection doesn’t signify a prominent shift in how Democrats plan on attracting more Hispanic voters, Gonzalez said.

“It’s a baffling choice in my opinion,” he said. “It doesn’t answer any of the concerns that the Mexican-American voters in parts of Texas have about the direction of the Democratic Party. This is, well, we’re stuck in the 1960s … we’re stuck with Cesar Chavez and we’re going to give you more of it.”