“One of the things I try to do quite actively is make sure I'm not the only person in these rooms who looks like me,” Juan Rodríguez said during an interview with The Times.
Born in Burbank and raised in North Hollywood as the son of immigrants from El Salvador, the Democratic political consultant and partner at Bearstar Strategies said that as a child he accompanied his mother to the Beverly Hills and Studio City homes she cleaned as a housekeeper. . Years later, her first invitations to political fundraisers came from people she had worked for.
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A meeting in 2005 with Antonio Villaraigosa at one of those events reinforced his interest in politics. The former mayor of Los Angeles asked him who he was there with. Rodríguez said her mother was working in the kitchen and that led Villaraigosa to introduce himself to her.
“My mother feeling seen is something I hold dear to my heart,” Rodríguez said. “She Always Her I was very intrigued by how power was always on the side of people who didn't have it. At that moment she made me believe that politics could be the great equalizer.”
Villaraigosa hired Rodríguez as an intern a few years later, beginning a meteoric rise that included stints as director of state relations for the city of Los Angeles and as a top assistant to the then-California prosecutor. Gen. Kamala Harris. Harris later tapped Rodriguez to lead her successful Senate campaign in 2016 and then his brief presidential bid in 2020, a failed effort for which his politician and advisers were criticized.
Bearstar founders Ace Smith and Sean Clegg saw the millennial strategist as the vanguard of a new generation of California political makers when they hired him in 2017 to open a Los Angeles office for the campaign strategy firm. In addition to Harris, his list of Bearstar clients includes U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and, in particular, the governor. Gavin Newsom. In 2021, Rodríguez successfully led the campaign against the governor's recall, for which he was named Democratic campaign manager of the year by the American Association. of Political Consultants.
His work for Newsom is not done. On a Monday afternoon in late October, Rodriguez, 39, said he couldn't speak at the time because he was busy in a meeting with Jane Fonda and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The actors were among a list of high-profile supporters Rodriguez was courting to join environmental justice groups in his campaign to thwart the oil industry's efforts to roll back a 2022 California law that created mandatory buffer zones around new wells.
Newsom defended the law. Rodríguez is leading the multi-million dollar fight for the 2024 ballot to keep it in place.
“There's kind of a worldview in terms of vision and what we believe in and what we don't believe in,” Rodriguez said, “so we often find ourselves fighting the fight on both fronts.”
