Dolores Huerta, who started the National Farmworkers Association alongside the late Cesar Chavez, is also signing onto Kamala Harris’ campaign as a California co-chair. | Richard Shotwell/Invision, File/AP Photo 2020 Elections Latino labor rights icon endorses Kamala Harris

Dolores Huerta, the iconic labor and civil rights leader who co-founded what became the United Farm Workers, is endorsing Sen. Kamala Harris for president, according to a statement shared first with POLITICO.

Huerta, who started the National Farmworkers Association alongside the late Cesar Chavez, is also signing onto Harris’ campaign as a California co-chair, joining Rep. Barbara Lee, a former Congressional Black Caucus chair, who endorsed Harris on Wednesday.


Huerta’s backing is a significant development in the early stages of the 2020 campaign and gives the California senator a leading voice in the labor movement and among Latinos nationally.

“I have spent my career advocating for workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, women’s rights, and on behalf of the LBGTQ community because I believe our country is only as great as the opportunities we afford all our communities,” Huerta said. “Senator Kamala Harris is the right leader to expand those opportunities as president, and I am proud to endorse her.”

Huerta also praised Harris, whom she’s supported in the past, for fighting on behalf of and giving a voice to the vulnerable — and singled out her work on criminal justice reform and for immigrants, ranging “from creating innovative programs to help first-time offenders get education and job training to avoid recidivism, to demanding that California and our country protect immigrant communities and afford them the opportunity to fully contribute to the country they love.”

For Harris, who since ascending to the Senate in 2016 has prioritized shielding immigrants — and specifically the Dreamers — from deportation, Huerta is an important validator, and not only in her home state of California — Huerta comes from a Mexican immigrant family and was raised in Stockton — but also neighboring Nevada, which stands to provide its winner a boost of momentum heading into Super Tuesday.

Huerta, a past recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights, has been active in California politics for decades. She was on stage with Robert Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles the night he won the primary and was later assassinated.

In 2016, Huerta made headlines after telling reporters she was shouted down by Bernie Sanders supporters as she tried to help translate at a casino caucus in Nevada — she said the hecklers implored her to use “English only.” The incident went viral, and Huerta tweeted: “We fought too long & hard to be silenced.”

Huerta’s backing is a positive development for Harris, who is aggressively courting support from Latinos and those in organized labor. In her statement, Huerta said Harris’ leadership and strength are “desperately needed at a time of great division and fear in America.”

“And her vision of uniting a new majority of this country behind a bold, progressive, inclusive agenda is exactly what we should hope for from the next President of the United States.”

