into account we helped the larger areas and populations were getting directed to the right places for navigators and that the community knew where and who the navigators were. and building those referral networks and community partners was important. we used networks and partners we spent 16 years building doing outreach and chip for children. so it was to our advantage to thick them and say we have been enrolling the children and now we can enroll the parents, too. it was a real advantage for us to go back to the existing networks and partnerships and looking at how we can expand them to reach the newly eligible

populations and we were able to get it up and running pretty quick. so here is some of the outcomes of the grant to date. we have been able to assist through the outreach and education event and the 101 navigator appointments over 78,000 individuals and attended hundreds of outreach programs and held 17,000 or more navigator appointments and that includes doing the application and setting up the account and they come back and want to pick a plan and enroll and so that doesn't always happen with every consumer in that order, but consumer appointments include all of those activities. we had almost a 100 navigators trained at any given time throughout the state. those navigators not only completed the 20 hours of

training that is required but in florida they were required to be finger printed, background checked and registered with the state. so those hundred navigators covered the 64 counties that were our target region. we were able to assist in a wide range of languages. the top five are here and include english, spanish, and creole and we had other languages we had to help. we made sure we always had access to translator services. and obviously reaching folks through media was real important to be able to get to message out to large number of folks around the state. the outreach efforts are one thing. they want assistance and help

you get a lot of information to a consumer and help them through the process but we really needed to get the message out that this program was available, they needed to know things like deadlines, and we found that this was one of the most effective ways to do it especially in the larger areas. this shows you the outcome of the work that the navigator issue at the university of south florida was able to achieve during the open enrollment period and we reached more than 200,000 consumers throughout the state. >> all right. thanks very much, jodi. turning to lisa stein now.

>> good afternoon. it is a pleasure to be here with you all today. we had the honor of serving as a navigator entity in four states. maryland and new york which were state-based exchange states who chose to expand medicaid. and we worked in georgia and tennessee that were federally funded states that didn't chose to expand medicaid. i would like to thank the department health and human services, the maryland benefit exchange and innew york benefit exchange. they have been great partners and supportive of our work and we are honored to be part of this exciting piece of history. so seedco advances economic

opportunity for people, communities and businesses in need. we are based in new york city and have offices in maryland, georgia and tennessee. we focus on workforce, work and family support and technical assistance. similar to the slide that karen shared our relevant experience prior to open enrollment was chip contracts in all four hof of the states and we hold snap contracts in all four states and in new york we participated in an enrollment program helping people to enroll in medicaid. in addition this last statistic -- sorry about that. this last bullet on the slide is a result of our signature tool of earning benefits online known as ebo. it is a web-based screening tool

and trained staff with help individuals receive multiple benefits, determine eligibility, popilate forms and provide individuals with checklist and resources to facilitate their enrollment into the benefits. so from 2005 to the beginning of open enrollment we have assisted over 180,000 households to receive over $300 million worth of benefits. so, in all four states we are both navigator-funded and a certified application counseling sponsoring entity. we work with community partners who have strong ifinity relationships such as to immigration population, lgbt population, and young invincible. and we had very great partners

in our all states and we are grateful for all of them. they are all too numerous to mention but i will highlight a few. in new york, a group that served the muslim population. in maryland working with two county health departments. in georgia a partnership that focused on the lgbt communities and worked with sos people and in tennessee we partners with the appalachian mountain project. i think similar to karen's slides earlier you can see the differences in terms of resources available in each state are shown. in maryland, state-wide, 306 funded navigators and assisters and in georgia 32 funded navigators. the variance in resources is at

the heart of my next two slides but they dictated the strategy for the deployment of the navigators. in brooklyn, it was a lot of one-to-one programs and that is not sitting in an office but going out to points in the community, not health sights, but workforce sights, churches and libraries. in georgia and tennessee because there were far fewer resources and more to cover we took the show on the road going to regional centers and partner with libraries and church co-sponsored events and do large scale enrollment events. the resources also dictated education and outreach. in the state-based exchange of

maryland and new york there were extensive campaigns like tv ads, radio ads, every bus and train, something in your electric bill. in georgia and tennessee it was a big part of the navigator to provide the education and outreach and the most extensive opportunity for the public to learn something positive about the market place was through earned media. we were successful in getting over a million media hits and they would be reviewed on the internet. people were hungry for the information. so, we sort of had our own lab. we had state-based exchanges,

federal-funded exchanges, urban territory, rural, state wide so seedco took the opportunity to take advantage of that. we contracted with the university of georgia health and risk association and they evalua evalua evaluated the information we collected in all four states. the three bullets on this slide are key findings that are coming out from the research and focused on the navigator interaction. there was a low awareness of navigator. people heard about the market place and the aca but were not aware of free and unbias assistance being available. consumers appreciated that assistance. often times navigators were the

only human face someone might encounter as they enrolled into the an insurance product. and finally the interaction between navigators and consumers could overcome negative preconception. a lot of individuals that came to us had negative ideas or beliefs regarding health care and the market place and felt much more positive and engaged and said they would go out and tell somebody about the interaction. so there were challenges. this isn't earth shocking news. there were technology issues. in all four states there were some amount of technical difficulty with the online portal or the call center. however in new york and maryland, the state-based exchange portals, navigators and assisters had backend access

with the portal and could see what was happening and assisted all the way through the enrollment. and they had direct contract with the state exchange leadership so they could communicate real-time information about the cases and get real-time results back. hhs was operating a portal and caller center for 34 states. the was no back end access into the portal or the call center. our primary lines of communication were true the grant wharfss and regional offices and they were terrific but the information had to travel through different luvox to finally get to the folks who were working the exchanges and the call centers. number two challenge that my colleagues talked about is low health literacy and the complexity of choosing the plan is the greatest problem the

navigator faces. all of the navigators in the state-based and federal-based exchanges received a combination of training that was required. but seedco felt committed the navigators needed more and we provided additional training on health literacy communication techniques in advance of open enrollment and throughout enrollment and additional training for cases like immigration status and verifying household income. finally the challenge was around privacy concerns. seedco has a histreof maintaining privacy standards and we were committed to doing the same here. we conducted site visits, observed navigators in their interaction with people and we

had a strict policy around making sure we were providing quality services to the consumers. we had some real great successes. similar to my colleague from florida fast implementation. maryland was an early implementer. we had about 10-11 weeks to get staff hire, trained and certified. georgia had additional requirements that made it a little lengthier but we did it. our community relationships was another one. we chose diverse groups. word of mouth is the most effective outreach strategy.

it establishes trust to begin the enrollment process. from the results of the research study, all states demonstrated effective outreach to diverse populations. finally, our infrastructure was successful. seedco's model allowed to respond on the ground and at the same time national coordination allowed us to share our best practi practices and do correction as-needed. looking ahead, similar to what karen indicated, open enrollment is 50% shorter and only overlaps with four weeks of the free tax preparation. this is a strong opportunity to reach people that come prepared for financial information and this is the first year folks understand the choice of making a choice or not making a choice.

we just finished a planning process with all four of our teams and are working hard to make sure we can take advantage of every day of the open enrollment. qha is the first in this. and there is uncertainty to the online portal functionality and online consumer communication but in the ends this is a benefit to learn from the lessons learned from last year. as i indicated before we looked forward to the study and look forward to sharing the information with you. thank you. >> great. thanks. jessica? >> thank you. good afternoon. i am jessica waltman and i am here with the association of underwriters.

we represent about a 100,000 insurance brokers and agents from around the state. they have been helping people get covered and stay covered for over a hundred years. we serve everyone from individual people accessing the market place to employer-based plans like fortune hundred companies. they own or work from a their own independent businesses not the health insurance plans and using an agent doesn't cost extra money. the law requires consumers be charged the exact same amount regardless of what assistance they use. but instead of receiving grants to help consumers like the other organization, if an agent enrolls someone in a plan their national producer number, npn, should be recorded and the agent is paid a small fee that goes

through the life of the insurance carrier and remember that because it is going to come back again. things with cost control is something they are good with and helping with claims problems. their business model is a little different than the other assist assister models because they have been around for a long t e time. you get a whacky bill during the point you don't understand and next year.

agents and brokers can work with other types of assisters but we have public policy suggestions regulatory or legislative that could make it easier to facilitate the partnerships for consumee consumeers. because they have been around for very long that is highly regulated. they may not apply to the other groups because they were not around when the laws were passed. in addition to exchange

certification they always have to be licensed in other state they do business, they have to complete an additional course of continuing education each year, usually about 24 hours a year and they hold malpractice insurance. they are all legally accountable for advice they give. they have to answer to their exchange and commissioners among others and all of the commissione commissioners. last year the agents were excited to help people participate in the coverage. the survey presented today doesn't show how many were certified but we cobbled together and estimated there were about a hundred thousand

agents and brokers working. not all exchanges collected have published their data about how many consumers used an agent. but a resent study showed half of the people used some kind of in-person assistance and they had the highest satisfaction rate of 83.9%. so just like everyone agents did have a few bumps in the road with open enrollment and one of the big bumps had to do with the agents identifying number. for a variety of reasons those numbers were not included in exchange records and agents and brokers and consumers didn't have a good way to fix that. so that created a payment problem for the broker and a liability problem because if

there number wasn't recorded that could effect the malpractice and it is a consumer issue because we think every interaction a consumer has should be recorded. and it was a problem between agents and brokers in the federal exchange particularly and a few of the state because there was only spot to record number. so if they worked together somebody's number wasn't being recorded so we think that should be corrected for the year ahead. agents could better serve consumers if they had a back end portal on the federal exchange for year-round case management. that is how non-exchange coverage works and most state exchanges and we think the federal market place would be helpful if they could catch up.

it would be an important tool for consumers to have access to and partner with brokers and agents. we would like to see technical improvements made to the plans for independent agents and brokers that would help them support the clients throughout the year. and a lot of the issues are specific to the federal market place. most of the state exchanges had better broker resources but even the best exchanges had a few problems, a lot of times around the identifying numbers. the good news is we think participation will be high next year and recertification is on going right now. it looks like it might be a little lower than last year perhaps due to the bumps we had

along the road but overall it is looking good and we see high participation rates again. we do have solutions for better assistance in the year. senator mary landrieu has two bills 2174 and 2173 and additionally there is a bipartisan coalition of mer than 75 house members who called on hhs to fix the issues on the regulatory fund and many others are calling on the whitehouse to up the priorities on the list on a separate bases. so looking ahead we do see great opportunities for 2015. the federal exchange will be online soon and it appears that

it will contain many of the broker services that the individual exchange on the federal level doesn't have available and may not have available for the open enrollment season ahead. but we are hopeful we will have some of that functionality. and we see new market enterance and new products being put on the market. and we will be able to learn lessons from the open enrollment previously. some questions we do see, and i would love to suggest in the question and answer period, include the new enrollment period. we want to make sure all exchanges and enrollees have ample time to review plans and not just redirected to the plan from last year if that is not

appropriate for them this year. we do have ongoing concerns about subsidy determinations and making sure they are accurate for the people registering. many may have been offered employer coverage or will be in the year ahead because of the employer responsibility requirements so getting that coverage offer for the first time can affect your subsidy eligible or negate that. so those are challenges i see. thank you very much and starting with the q and a now. >> let's start with something you actually raised. i should say let me remind you you can tweet a question, you can voice a question, you can write a question. so you have your options and i would urge you to get involved

in the conversation and also encourage the panelist to offer comments back and forth if something you have heard raised a question or made you want to make an observation. you were talking about reenrollment and the challenges it raises and i wanted to get your reaction and those of the other panelist as well. we have some number, whether it is 8 million or 6 million or 10 million of people who have signed up for something and are going to have to sign up for something else or renew in what they have. we have prediction that there will be even more people who will be attempting to enroll this open season.

what kind of things can we anticipate and try to get rid of? >> there is always going to be some people that their plan option from last year still is a good fit and it is important to have an easy way to get back and renew that coverage. but we believe that your health insurance purchasing decision is one of the most important profound decisions a family can make. it has significant financial security and health security and we think every year you should take a look to make sure it fits particularly with the subsidies and make sure it is affordable and make sure there is new enterance out there that might be a better fit.

we didn't ask the assister programs to chunk it up and say how much of time was involved in doing the id proofing, establishing the account and determining your eligibility for subsidies and how much was plan choice so i don't know the answer to that question nationwide. i spent a little time in open enrollment seeing a program in northern virginia and watching the actual process and in just that morning i did notice that it did take about an hour and a half so that was validating for us. but most of time was in the application process. not the planned choices. and one question we asked in the survey was did you get to the process and see the plan choice and much of the time they didn't. so by the time they got through

the process of figure out their income and who was in their household and if they had availability of job-base coverage and that wasn't explained well and this took a lot of time plus sometimes the website was clunky. and so i think the plan choice is absolutely important. that is the cherry on top and what completes the enrollment but all of this other stuff was what presented a lot of difficulty and required a lot of assi assistance for people and that is what the assister programs spent time doing. in reenrollment we are going to learn in real-time what the research literature told us and that is there is a lot of volitility in the low-income families. today i think i am filing married and jointly but maybe by

the end of the year that may not be the case and how do i know? i don't know. better reevaluate what they are eligible for in terms of assistance and we are going to see a lot more about how much of that goes on and that is a difficult process because there is guess work involved when projecting all of this going forward and reconciling at the same time what you just did a year ago. >> i should ask the people at the microphone to identify yourself. >> i am dr. carol. i am a primary care physician. and my questions are a good follow-up to what you have been talking about. my question is for karen and the follow-up survey that you did

looks like more than a third of the people thought they picked the wrong plan and a large number of people were having trouble with the co-pays and deductibles. one question is there was supposed to be a standard form in which the plans were supposed to fill out so it was easy to compare one plan to another whereas before this when you picked an insurance plan it was 50 pages long and there was no way to compare one to the another because they all talked about different things. and the second question has to do with affordability. when the subsidies were setup, they were looking at affordability and how much the federal government would spend as opposed to how much the people would spend and i wonder what your post-enrollment survey told you about either one of

those. >> we didn't ask specifically about the summary of benefits and coverage -- theat is the first thing you mentioned. the standard format that describes what a plan covers. >> do you have a sense of whether it was useful? >> we are in the process at kaiser of looking at the sbc's and i know other groups are trying to do this as well. so like a lot of things in the first year they were not all perfect and there are inconsistency and there were technical it problems with clicking on the link and it not coming up or clicking on the clink and it does coming up and not matching the plan you were clicking on. so many, many factors were at

work there to make it, you know, trickier. and a lot of plan designs we notice offered through the market place are innovative, and creative and cost sharing designs. a deductible isn't always a deductible. sometimes you get stuff, hit the deductible and get more and sometimes it applies differently to these services and not these. i am seeing things i have not seen before so it is interesting to go through and try to catalog it. for many reasons it was difficult for people to evaluate plan choices even if they knew a lot about health insurance coming in. when we asked assisters what kind of things would you like to have more training on they said more training on the qhp choices and in particular why is it if there is five bronze plans offered by one company and what

is different between plans 1-5. that is the kind of thing that assisters would like to get more briefing on. they don't want to have to actually be part of the sales team to get access to that. so that is one of the things that is definitely still evolving. >> is kaiser going to do another report before the next open enrollment period? >> on? they do reports every day. >> on the follow-up of why people didn't like their plan, why more nan a third of the people thought they chose the wrong plan. >> we don't have anything planned on that. as the assister survey came out we did another survey on market place participation and we were looking at people who had coverage they purchased on and off the exchange and some of the

policies they were review -- renewing -- that didn't conform to the rules. we had satisfaction measures although on that survey when we asked people questions like what is your deductible we had very high rates of i don't know/not sure. so on and off the market place i think insurance is still a mystery to people. i am working on insurance literacy so this is a complicated future. your second question had to do with affordability and i would defer to my sister colleagues who saw this in real-time. the subsidies are not comprehensive in the aca. people have to contribute a significant amount toward the premium that is pegged to the level of your income but the

cost sharing surpasses what people have to pay in premiums in many instances. these are mostly high deductible plans. we have a little confusion because gold sounds like everything should be covered. but there is a lot of cost-sharing people have to pay and i think what a lot of consumers who were not used to private insurance after paying for the premium and going to the doctor and still owing $150. it was difficult to understand. >> lisa? jodi? any comments? >> i think it depended on where you live in the community.

rural versus urban had fewer choices. you may have one carrier or a couple plans from one carrier and in addition to the states where seedco work there is a lot of pourious borders so folks are used to crossing borders and that got more difficult this go around. so i think some of those issues are also really at play because the map is so chris crossed and you cross the line and the reality is very different. >> i just want to say around affordability -- we had to spend a significant amount of time talking about the individual health plans and we saw a lot of time taken up by that. because the consumers didn't come in being literate around

the idea of coinsurance, versus deductible, versus copay and how many are coming out of their pocket before the insurance kicks in. when you look at the plans and you call this a donut hole but you have to tear in the plans with the consumer so when they walked away they were really informed about the decision they made. on the surface, the information wasn't necessarily all there at at glance. i think when you talk about affordability, you had to factor in all of the theses that were comprised of the out of pocket piece for the consumer and not just the premium as one factor to look at because if they started adding up some of the other pieces it was very

possible and likely, that certain plans were totally unaffordable. and the other issue was the family might have someone who is employed and that individual is employed, had virtually no premium payments, but to enroll the entire family cost $10,000. it didn't allow them to enroll in a plan with cost sharing and tax credits. they could only enroll in the market place in most circumstances without obtaining those additional discounts. so that was a real challenge we saw around affordability. >> go right ahead. >> margaret with h and r block. absent a change or push back of the open enrollment date, perhaps lisa and jodi can talk about this, we see a scenario on

february 16th, having a client coming in to do taxes and didn't enroll last season and are hit with the small penalty this year and say how can i fix this on february 16th and now they are hit with a penalty that is three times as much for the following tax filing season. what case management issues are you working with and how are you addressing this in current enrollees and watt are using to educate people that didn't enroll the first time around and took the $95 penalty. >> i would say from our perspective that talking about the penalty and the deadlines were key messages to pushing folks to come in for assistance or sign up. so i think it is going to be important that we are putting an effort forth about getting the message out widely and clearly.

i think we saw it was impactful and more pressing because it isn't going to be quite as simple to take the penalty because it would be a lot more painful than last time. we are working with partners in the business community to make sure they are equally informed and i think that is going to be key to getting this information out to folks and working with partners at h and r block who have been helpful in the past and involved. so i think that is going to be something we are going to spend a lot of time on. >> so, the empicize we are taking at seedco and all four of our states is taking advantage of the time we have now. all of the navigators and assisters are out there educating, doing out preach, schedule appointments and trying

to develop referral networks to get people in. in the first open enrollment we did education, outreach and enrollment and the focus shifted in the last three months to mass enrollment. all of education and outreach this time is being done on the front end. if anyone here is thinking about what might need to happen for the extension of the period -- >> that would be wonderful. >> it would greater overlap with the tax season and that is significant. >> does that mean, by the way, there is any sort of agreement in the community that it would be a good thing to try to align the open enrollment period with the tax season? >> yes. >> okay. there you go! >> i totally think this is maybe

a problem with this whole concept of delivering subsidies through the tax system. and i totally take and agree with all of these concerns that people need to -- february and march is when people start gathering their information and can make a better guess of what they can be next year but they are still guessing. i think if we moved the open enrollment to always ending in april and everybody signs up at the end we run the risk of building a structural quarter in people's lives because the coverage ends in december and they will not sign up until the spring. if the answer is to realign the plan here you just moved it around the cal nder and have to estimate taxes for the coming year and the 1st quarter so the hard problem is guessing what

your eligibility is a year in advance because the tax system can't give you a real-time take on your eligibility. i am a little nervous about moving it around the calender for fear of uninsuring people during the months. >> people don't focus during the holiday. last december, you know, there was a little spike to meet the january 1 deadline for folks who had preexisting conditions and were waiting for the opportunity and wanted the coverage on forest. but due to holidays, weather -- it was difficult to do. i think they are all valid points and i don't speak for the whole community, but you know, there is all sorts of timing factors to take into account. >> jodi? >> i would say the problem or

the challenge is there is still a mental disconnect between the concept of having health care coverage and my taxes. and those two don't interlink for the average individual. you think of taxes and that falls in one bux bucket and my health falls in another place and in people's mind they don't interconnect and we are trying to do that and i think it is going to take a while to overcome that challenge for the average person who has to live their every day life. >> okay. yes, go ahead >> i am brian with technical frontier. i have a couple questions with the follow-up activity in the field. i know you are all doing follow-up and i am wondering is this process going to be ongoing as this program continues to

evolve? and i guess one of the other questions i have is do you have any information about the beneficiaries themselves, the people receiving the help, are saying about the quality of their experience whether they are being served by brokers or assisters or navigators. any comments on that? >> could i ask you what you mean by ongoing follow-up? >> do you do these every year? within three months following open enrollment season? >> fair enough. >> well this was our first survia so we haven't decided internally -- i am hoping we will do an annual survey for a while because i expect it will be evolving for a couple years but we don't have immediate plans for surveys. my colleague jen has been out in the field doing sight visits and focus groups to find out what is

going on so we are looking for other ways to monitor what is going on. >> if i could ask for for bearance for the folks at the microphones. we don't want to completely d ignore the people who wrote on cards or tweets. jen, i wonder if you can interject a couple of these questions. >> we got a couple questions related to the training for assisters and how adequate it was in particularly and what the plans are for improving the training going forward. so i don't know if -- >> i cannot speak for the

exchange entities as the states dictate the teachings. we maintain as a priority we will wrap around and do ongoing training with the navigators. they have been training over the summer and we will train any new employee and doing mentoring partnering and continue to do the quality monitoring to make sure the folks out there are trained to do what they need to do. >> and we have a question i would point you to our survey and asked the assisters what kind of additional training they wanted and 92% wanted more training not only at the outset

when they get certified but throughout the year on topics like helping people with their post-enrollment questions and problems, on tax related issues, immigration related issues, they wanted more training on insurance literacy and more information on the qualified health plans and more training on just using the online and paper application and how that differs and they very much appreciated the training that both market place offered with the webinars and conference calls to provide updates and refresh. and they appreciated the groups of outside groups like enroll america and georgetown university worked with a number of programs to provide indepth training on complex topics. >> and i would say one of the things that we hope to see in

the training going forward would more directly relate to the kinds of priorities that consumers have when they are trying to select plans. it is one thing to walk through the plan choices and key terms. but when consumers are sitting there making plan decisions they are focused on how they will use health care and that is key to the decision they make. it isn't solely around cost. a lot of them need health care for particularly services. not all of the health plans cover the same thing. they need particular providers. they need particular prescriptions. so you have to be able to get into the nitty-gritty of what the health care plans provide and really take the time to understand what the consumer's health care needs are going to be so they make a plan choice

that will provide them access to the care they will need. >> from the agent and broker perspective, in addition to their exchange training they are required by state law to complete additional continuing edgeication each year and they are the only ones that can truly advise about what plans to pick. i think it is great for the assister community but another way to address this is to further encourage better partnerships between the agent and broker and navigator community given their knowledge and the focus of agents and brokers to provide service throughout the plan year. there is no funding issues with that relative to agent and brokers. so they are in place and ready to help. if we could further the partnerships between the two we could really help provide better information to the consumers,

better plan selection advice and better support to the assister community. >> and just one tiny thing. the state of illinois was a partnership market place and they put together a new plan comparison tool for consumers that based on what a lot of you maybe familiar with because consumer checkbook does this and they use a lot of the plan comparison tools for federal employees. you can look at the website but it has more information about plans and not just the cost of the premiums but different scenario. if you are going to have a baby or low-cost person. more satisfaction and quality information about the doctors in the network so i would commend you to take a look at the illinois market place plan comparison tool. it is interesting. >> could i ask folks as we go

through the last few minutes of question to pull out the blue evaluation form and fill it out so we can get your feedback and we are interested in the ponopin of you on the congressional staff. >> thanks for sharing your expertise. i am interested given the proposed rule to auto enroll people that was talked about earlier in the panel. just curious, jodi or lisa, if there are plans to segment marketing or outreach to folks that have been enrolled or may auto enrolled versus people who maybe new comers into the system? >> sorry. yes, we are going to have to focus on the renewal and

recertification process as part of the outreach effort. in the years of experience of doing this, we tend to see high rates -- well retention becomes a challenge. we don't want folks loosing coverage and consumers getting confused and making decisions they are not happy with. we are going to have to do this now even as we are still doing special enrollment periods and consumers are coming into the door and we are getting out into the community and using that opportunity to make sure people are fully aware this is going to happen and they will have to take steps one way or another and this is going to involve them in some way so they are not caught by surprised so they know where to get help if they have questions. we are take ing a lot of time n to focus on that so people have a heads up this is coming down

the pike. we are able to keep the enrollment gains we had during the first open enrollment period. >> it is important to understand we are not in control of the renewal process. we don't notify consumers. and there is talk about following up. if you operate in a federal exchange state, i cannot follow-up. i wasn't allowed to keep identifying information and i had to get consent to follow-up through enrollment and only for the purpose of enrollment. so there is no cold calling, knocking on doors or no list. so it is our relationships in the community and people seeing our partners as a trusted source if they are coming in with letters and i think it is important to understand, i guess it is my understanding that folks get a notice from the insurance company that will have the full cost, 100% of the what

the plan was and if they received a subsidy they get a second letter with that amount. so imagine having the low health literacy, one letter comes first, and one is a bit delayed in the mail and you can imagine the heart attack that you have at your kitchen table. so those are all challenges that are very real and beyond the control of the navigator. >> i wanted to point out a key differences between the assisters, navigators and brokers because brokers have been around a long time and are regulated differently. brokers could keep that and they do have the existing base they have been helping. they are able to reach out to the existing clients and that is why a partnership is beneficial. lisa helps them, refers them to a broker, and then the person has the year-around support.

so when they get the two conflicting letters and she doesn't know how to get back in touch with them our members can. unfortunately not everyone had that benefit. so we are concerned about the year ahead with the redetermination process to make sure because it is a volatile population and their life choices could have changed and their income and we want to make sure they understand the letters and looking at the coverage options and making sure it is the right fit. >> we have three folks at the microphone and now a substitute standing by for that man. sorry the gentlemen behind the microphone isn't going to get his question asked. i would ask you to keep the questions as brief as possible and i know the panelist will be

insightful as soon as possible. we will try to get through even if it takes us into extra time. yes, sir, you were here. >> hello. the data that was presented kind of indicated there is a lack of coordination among the assister groups. is there going to be a federal or third party coordination to incentvise the assister groups or just recommendation? >> i think that especially in the federal states we had no choice but to accord nature and did it ourselves. in georgia and tennessee we were with other funded entities because we had to and we were

making sure we were not dup dupliting efforts. ... >> while that is different, it is not less valuable, and i think that is an important statement to put out there. >> and i would just say in

florida and just, you know, representing the the university of south florida initiative, we actually, we actually had some more formalized efforts around coordination. because, you know, there was a limit to what the navigators could do and how many navigators were on the ground. and in a state as big as florida, a hundred navigators are only going to go so far. so from the tampa bay area, for example, they regularly brought together all the assisters on a regular basis in a coalition format, and they tracked the efforts of where they were reaching consumers, and they also coordinated efforts to get in and get out and doing outreach and education events because, you know, one man can't do it all, and so in an effort to make sure that nothing was left uncovered, they worked with the entire scope of a sister partners that were in in the given area, including the

contracted partners. i would say they were all brought to the table. so that's a good example where not only did they coordinate, but they actually tracked the efforts of the coordination in a formalized way. >> yes. >> hi. my name is mara, i'm with the deloitte center for health solutions, and my question was relating to the young invincibles outreach. i guess my question is more what did you guys learn when outreaching to this specific population? what were your challenges? and the other one is based on some of the studies you have done if you've collected information. did you find any data on maybe the rate at which the outreach -- they outreach to you guys, the sister programs, versus other demographics? >> i can answer the question about the outreach, and it was interesting because we're a university. it made sense that we were reaching out to the young invincible population, first and foremost. and so we really worked with the universities and the local

colleges, the community colleges. we started realizing that some of those mass enrollment events were actually most effective to getting some of the younger, the younger population. specifically to those that were enrolled, obviously, into classes. so we had, we worked with student health services, and we worked with the student government folks. and this was effective in that we were able to get a lot of student into coverage. i think one of the challenges that we had with that is if you had students at part-time jobs that were otherwise supported on student loans, obviously, they were at risk of not being qualified for cost sharing and tax credits because they didn't have enough income to qualify. in some counties where you're able to connect and make sure they didn't remain uninsured, but in a lot of cases they were having to, you know, not get enrolled. but i think we found that it was tough starting out, but we were

able to get, we were able to use some of those avenues to get to larger numbers of students that were in that, you know, 18, 19-34 range, and they're all over the university, and they're enrolled in classes, and they work part-time, and they work full-time, and it gave us access to a large number of folks. and we utilized those all over the state. so that was effective for us. >> yes. go ahead, quick comment? >> just we found in all four of our states that about 25% of the people we assisted fell into the age range of young invincibles, so on par with the national. >> okay. and a last question. >> hi. i'll keep this brief. my name's michael from the american institutes for research, and my question's for, excuse me, for jodi. were there particular interventions that florida took that were better than other

interventions especially because resources were strict because medicaid was not expanded? >> i'm not sure what you mean by "interventions," do you mean outreach approaches? >> yeah, approaches, enrollment. and to take certain approaches over others, especially with the low resources. >> well, we definitely found that partnering with the hospitals was effective. you know, clearly, it's an -- that's an easy way to identify the uninsured. so our enrollment with the hospitals was definitely very effective. now, we coordinated with health planning councils throughout the state, and that also allowed us access to a wide range of partners. and i, you know, we saw the results from that. but i think there were certain aspects of each of their initiatives that were specific to their community. i think the partnership with the hospitals and the colleges and the universities were very

effective. the other thing is recognizing that we did have that medicaid gap knowing where the county health plans existed, so we were able to connect people in certain counties to some coverage if they fell in that gap as well as we put together an actual concrete resource manual of where all the resources were in the community so that folks could access the services that they needed despite not having coverage. so that meant working with the rural health centers, the qualified health centers and working with the county health plans and, you know, mental health centers and all of those kinds of resources so that we were still connecting folks directly to services. >> okay, thank you. and how about approaches that weren't successful? [laughter] sorry to put you on the spot. >> um, gee, i'm not sure i can answer that question quickly.

um, i think going back to the work with the universities, i think it took us a while to get that off the ground. and initially our, how we designed those efforts were not initially successful, and we certainly had to circle back and figure out how to make those effective and which were the right partners to work with in any university system or a community college that connected us better to more students. we initially started off, we saw a very small response to what we were doing. so we were able to revise that and change who we worked with within the colleges. so i don't know, maybe that's more specific. >> okay, thank you. >> uh-huh. >> jen? >> yes. well, thank you. thank you, panelists, for a wonderful discussion. i think, um, we learned a lot about what worked and what didn't during the open

enrollment period this first year, and i think we have some, talked about some ideas for improving the process and going forward, but we also know that i think there are a lot of challenges that lie ahead for this next open enrollment period and beyond. but i think this has been a great discussion, and i thank you all for attending, and i thank our panelists for participating. >> and ask you to join us in doing so. [applause] >> yes. [inaudible conversations]

>> and news this afternoon on the impact of the 2010 health care law, the associated press writing that states that fully embrace the law's coverage expansion are experiencing a significant drop in the number of uninsured residents according to a new major survey released today. states whose leaders still reject to obamacare are seeing much less change. the gallup poll found an overall drop of four percentage points in the share of uninsured residents for states accepting the law's core coverage provisions, states that expanded their medicaid programs and also built or took an active role in managing new online insurance markets. the drop was about half that level, 2.2 percentage points, in the states that took neither of those states or just one of them, the reporting of the associated press. live coverage today in the nation's capital includes the white house africa forum. the white house has been hosting a three-day summit in washington for some 50 african heads of state. the business forum continues

this afternoon. their coverage getting underway in under ten minutes. we expect it at 1:45 eastern vice president joe biden will speak, the secretary of state and president obama. the administration announcing that u.s. businesses will commit to investing $14 billion in various projects across the continue innocent. that's coming up -- continent. that's coming up live over on c-span. meanwhile, the administration this afternoon -- matter of fact, the president briefed on the shooting of the major general in afghanistan, the pentagon confirming an american general was killed today when a man believed to be an afghan soldier opened fire at a military base near kabul. rear admiral john kirby confirmed a number of casualties, including that major general, and more details as we get them on the c-span networks. looking at our prime time coverage tonight over on c-span, from this year's western conservative summit with tea party patriots co-founder jenny

beth martin along the with former alaska governor sarah palin who called for the impeachment of president obama. >> these days you hear all of these politicians, they're denouncing barack obama saying, oh, he's a lawless, imperial president and ignores court orders and changes laws by fiat and refuses to enforce laws that he just doesn't like. that's true, but the question is, okay, politicians, what are you gonna do about it? [laughter] [applause] let's call their bluff. i'm calling their bluff because we need a little less talk and a lot more action. this is only one remedy for a president who commits high crimes and misdemeanors, and it's impeachment. it's the i word. [cheers and applause] >> by the way, we will show you

all of that event, the western conservative summit in denver, tonight at 8 p.m. eastern over on c-span. voters are heading to the polls in four states today including michigan, washington state, missouri and kansas to select their party's nominees for the fall general elections. we are tracking the senate race in kansas where incumbent republican pat roberts is facing off against tea partier milton wolfe. the polls close in that state at 8 and 9 p.m. eastern, and on c-span we'll have live up-to-date results as the race results become available. well, a panel of republican and democratic strategists recently discussed the potential impact of the latino vote in the upcoming midterm elections and how the hispanic community views recent efforts at immigration reform in congress. this was hosted by the national association of latino elected and appointed official. it's an hour. >> it's an exciting year politically as well. so as you all know in 131 days

will be election day in terms of the midterm election, and what we would like to do to start off the conference today is to talk, put this in a political context as to how we expect the latino vote and latino candidates to do in the midterm elections. it's one of the major themes of the conference, the chair discussed some of the other major themes we'll be working on. but certainly, the elections are top of mind at the moment. as we talk about 2014, let's make sure we put this in context about 2010. because when we compare elections, it's only fair to compare a midterm to a midterm. so let's not forget what happened back in 2010's midterm elections where the latino vote had a decisive impact. the democrats would only -- are in control of the senate today because of the elections of these two senators, senator michael bennett of colorado and

senator harry reid of nevada. the latino vote was decisive in their, senator reid's re-election campaign and senator bennett's bid to be elected for the first time. and that election 6.6 million latinos voted, and they comprised just under 7% of the latino vote. also important of the 2010 election were the real significant milestones that were achieved by latinos in the republican party. marco rubio was elected to the united states senate. the first latina governor of any state was elected in 2010, susana martinez, in new mexico. first latino governor of nevada, and the number of latinos in the u.s. house of representatives more than doubled from three to seven. although it's not an election we should compare the midterm elections to, let's not forget

the decisive impact latinos had in election 2012 where 11.2 million latinos went to the polls comprising 8.4% of the nation's electorate, 5% increase over 2008. and we know that the latino vote had a major impact in system of the decisive m -- in some of the decisive campaigns in swing states. so as we look towards 2014, let's look at how the latino vote is continuing to increase. we are making strides. if you look at this chart that follows the trajectory of the latino vote in midterm elections from 1994 to 2010, we see that in every single election cycle there's been a steady increase in the number of latino voters. that's the blue line. and it tracks very closely to the green line which is the number of latino-registered voters. but let's keep our eye on that red line. that line is the number of latinos who are eligible to vote.

and the truth is that that population continues to grow faster than the population of latinos who actually vote. so the challenge before us is to make sure that we engage latinos as they enter the electorate. every single year 50,000 latinos turn 18 years of age. these are citizens. so every single day -- and i forget the math on this, i think it's every single day it's something like 2,000 latinos become eligible to vote in this country. so we have our work cut out for us. in terms of how many latinos will show up to the polls this november, the educational fund released its projections earlier this year. we're expecting that 7.8 million latinos will vote in november. now that's an 18% increase over the 2010 numbers, and we will make up 7.8% of the national

share of all voters. so again, we're making strides. the latino vote is growing. but i'll be honest with you, for naleo it is not growing fast enough, and later, throughout the next three days, we'll be talking about what we are doing to make sure we engage the latino electorate, grow our numbers, and part of the conversation this morning will be about some other initiatives that are being undertaken to also increase the latino electorate. placing this election in context, there are some political factors that will shape the latino vote. it'll shape whether latinos are mobilized to go out and vote, it'll shape how they vote and the choices they make. now, immigration reform is top of mind certainly to everybody in this room and to latinos across the country. traditionally and historically, the immigration reform has not been the number one issue for latino voters. and in many respects, it makes

sense. if you are a voter, you're a citizen. you're born here or you're a naturalized citizen. so you don't have a personal immigration issue to resolve. but as the issue has continued to be part of the public discourse since 2000 and as more and more latino citizens know personally a latino who is undocumented, the importance and saliency of this issue has increased to the point where -- and we'll have one of our panelists address this -- immigration itself has risen to the top of the issues that latino voters care about in elections. so one of the questions will be what does it mean that immigration reform has not yet passed both houses of congress? what will it mean for november 2014? and we'll be talking about that in a couple of minutes. some other things that'll be affecting the latino vote include the situation and the

condition of the federal voting rights act. the voting rights act has been a powerful tool since 1965 to make sure that every single american citizen is able to vote free of discrimination. last year the united states supreme court in shelby v. holder declared section four unconstitutional meaning that section five which required preclearance of any change in election practices by nine states and a number of counties, that that formula for determining who was subject to preclearance was unconstitutional. so as a result of the shelby decision, texas, alabama and mississippi have imposed voter id laws that in our view and in the view of the evidence have a discriminatory impact on latinos, african-americans and others. and arizona and kansas are two of the states that are trying to strengthen the ability to impose proof of citizenship requirements in voter

registration. so the environment itself is becoming more challenging to insure that latinos are able to vote, motivated to vote and vote free of discrimination. now, a little bit about what is happening in terms of candidates in 2014. we expect that two of the latino governors who were elected in 2010 have excellent opportunities to be reelected in 2014, both governor martinez and governor sandoval are running strong campaigns for re-election. and something is happening in new england. in the state of rhode island, the mayor of providence, dominican-american, is running an extremely competitive campaign for governor of rhode island. that primary will be september 9th. we'll see if he makes it through the primary and then in the competition for november. there are also a number of latinos running for the number

two offices in their states. joe garcia who's the incumbent in colorado is up for re-election, carlos lopez canter rah who was appointed in january 2014 is now running on the ticket with governor scott. she will be with us this, later at this conference if not already in the room, assemblymember lucy flores from nevada is running for lieutenant governor of her state, john sanchez, new mexico, running for re-election, and a former recipient of the edward r -- [inaudible] award is running for lieutenant governor in texas. so some exciting and interesting races for the number two spots in states across the country. other significant statewide contests that we'll be keeping an eye on very closely in november includes state senator alex padilla --

[applause] who is running for california's is secretary of state. he was a top vote getter in california's primary. and that's as much as i'm going to say about his election. [laughter] former deputy secretary of state -- again, another thing that's happening in rhode island, she herself is running for secretary of state there in rhode island, and we hope she makes it past the september primary. in terms of attorney general races, sean andreas is running for his first term as an elected attorney general in utah, and a form toker member of the naleo board running for attorney general in new mexico. again, interesting and fascinating races that we're following very closely. other statewide races, robert alagon in new mexico, rick lopez for state treasurer in new

mexico, and george p. bush running for texas land commissioner in texas. there are -- of course, the entire house of representatives is up for re-election, all 435 seats. we expect the vast majority of the latinos and latinas who are running for re-election to be reelected, but there are some very close races that are in the mix in this election throughout the country. here in california representative raul reese who defeated incumbent mary bono two years ago is running for re-election and has a very competitive race against an assemblymember, brian nastandi. joe garcia who also ran and was elected in florida, first hispanic democrat to be elected to congress from florida, is running against a competitive field of republicans. that primary is august 26th, and we'll see who will be

challenging him in what we expect to be a very competitive race. one of the districts in texas has changed hands between political parties several times in the past decade. it currently is being held by a democrat, and he will be facing business consultant will herd in texas' 23rd district. that's another district that both parties are investing tremendous resources in. and then also here in california, in california's 21st districtly in the central valley being challenged by amanda renteria, again, another racing being watched closely by port parties -- both parties. so part of what we want to continue to see at naleo is the growth of elected latino officials. these are the numbers that we are publishing here at the naleo annual conference in 2014.

this is our record, for the record on the number of latinos who serve in elected office as of january 1st of this year. and here's a comparison over the past ten years. we've gone from no u.s. senators ten years ago to three. the number of members of congress from 22 to 28. overall the increase has been 25%, and the numbers of latinos in elected office from just under 5,000 to just over 6,000 latinos serving in elected office across the country today. so that's a little bit about where we are in terms of the number of latinos who we expect to turn out to the election, the impact we had in 2010 and 2012, and now to talk about the impact and the political context of 2014, i'm going to invite up my guests and panelists to put all this in context and to explain to us what they're doing to make a difference.

so as i introduce you, please come up and join me. first we'll start with my friend, daniel gars -- garza who began as a staff assistant. after serving several years as an hechted official himself in -- elected official himself in washington, he served in the george w. bush administration at the department of interior and that's where we first had the opportunity to work together. his professional experience also crosses into the private sector as president of the hispanic -- [inaudible] group. he served as co-producer on univision, and today he serves as executive director of the libre initiative, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advances the principles and values of economic freedom to empower the u.s. hispanic community by developing a network of hispanic pro-liberty activists across the united states.

then we have dr. victoria defrancesco soto who is a fellow at the lbj school at the university of texas. she's a senior analyst for latino decisions. she was named one of the top 12 scholars in the country by "diversion" magazine. she received her ph.d. from duke university. her academic experience centers on immigration, women, race and ethnic politics. she is also a contributor to msnbc and a regular political analyst for telemundo. welcome, doctor. >> thank you. [applause] >> and our third panelist is also a good friend. he's president of the latino victory project, a nonpartisan effort to build political power within the latino community while building a permanent base of latino donors to support them. josh alex spent five years in my be land throe by is serving at

the open -- philanthropy where he invested more than $16 million to increase political participation in communities of color. most recently, chris pal was -- chris ball was named as one of d.c.' most influential leaders under 40 which is quite a feat given he only moved to d.c. about three months ago. [laughter] >> small town. >> small up to. okay, so please welcome cristobol josh alex and all three of our panelists. >> thank you. [applause] >> so let's start with dr. dr. francesco. if you can give us an overview of what you think this election is really going to mean for latinos and what the latino vote -- prospects for it. >> i'm going to start off with a question -- >> okay. >> and it's a question that i frequently get, and i'm sure many of you get can it. which is, who cares about latinos? and people don't say it that

way. it usually comes about in the terms of, oh, yeah, latinos are the fastest growing population, but they're punching below their weight, but they're pulling in third in terms of turnout between african-americans -- behind african-americans and whites. so we see this question being posed, and it's a valid question, and these are facts that we are facing with. but i want to answer this question, and i want to answer this question with facts, with empirical data, and i'm going to be really, really blunt. we matter partly because we're having a lot of babies. case in point right here. [laughter] [applause] you know, i joke, but baby max is going to be born the september before the 2032 presidential election. i'm not saying we planned it

this way, but maybe it was a consideration in the back of our mind. right now age is a liability for our community. the average age of latinos is ten years below that of anglos and african-americans. so we're talking about 27 as opposed to 37. and when you're looking at new latino destinations -- north carolina, arkansas, tennessee -- the average age is 15. black, white, latino, young folks just don't vote. they've got other stuff going on in their lives, you know? teenagers and 20-somethings, even early 30s are doing other things. but what i want us to keep our eye on, and arturo showed this in the graph, is the brute for the of demographic change. finish is the brute force of demographic change.

another one i want to highlight is poly-sci 101 tells us that poor folks and folks with less education are also less likely to turn out and vote. and, yes, latinos have historically had lower educational rates and lower income rates. but if we just look at that static number, we're losing sight of the dynamic. and the last couple of years -- and dennis in his remarks alluded to this -- we have made huge strides with our educational attainment. the pew institute has done a fabulous job of tracking these educational gains. so just last year we saw that latino college enrollment surpassed that of white college enrollment. high school dropouts are dropping. so in addition to that demographic force, we also have rising levels of education.

at the same time, we have increases in economic attainment because we had it beaten out of us during the great recession. our community suffered the most. i think it was 66 or 68% of our wealth that we lost, and ironically, those who are the poor and have the most to gain from being politically involved usually don't vote. but what we see is with this rising tide of economic attainment that latinos are gaining on, this is also going to push us to the polls. so that's the first part of my answer to, well, why do latinos matter? the second is because we're swinging. latinos have swing tendencies. compared to african-americans and whites, latinos have the biggest chunk of independent voters. in the last couple of elections,

la toe knows -- latinos have definitely tended toward the democratic party, but let's not forget about the early 2000s. and living in texas, i see a very vibrant republican latino relationship even in the midst of some strained immigration issues. so we know that latinos also matter because of that middle ground that they inhabit. and geographically speaking, they also tend to be in a lot of the big swing states; florida, nevada, new mexico. and then we see these growing populations in ohio and virginia. so latinos matter not just because of that middle they occupy, but because political entrepreneurs know out too, and they're going after them, and they want to pull them in. i have 37 seconds left -- [laughter] so i'm going to wrap it up.

i don't want arturo to have to get tough on me. i would love to talk later maybe in the q&a about battleground texas, something that i am seeing on the ground, because i think it's this beautiful example of the -- [speaking spanish] of how you see this latino demographic brute force, this latino educational attainment, economic power bubbling up, and democrats and republicans are going mano a mano for the latino vote, and we're seeing it just in this election for 2014, and this is just what is to come nationally and federally. so with that, i will wrap it up. >> all right, thank you. [applause] and we will certainly talk about the battleground of texas. fortunately, we have two today hand knows -- >> yes. >> actually, three. i was born in el paso. four. [laughter] >> el paso too. >> austin. i'm a texan by marriage. >> texan by marriage.

so, daniel, the libre initiative. >> yes. >> you're obviously coming at this from a perspective of reaching conservative latino voters and growing the electorate. tell us about the libre initiative, what plans you have, what does 2014 mean from your perspective? >> well, we feel it's important. i i think more important than demographic, economic status, educational status is that latinos get a sense of ownership in the process. look, puerto rico has high participation rates when it comes to voting. that's because they own the island. they feel that they're part of the community, that they can control their destiny, they can control the political outcomes and policy outcomes of the island. and so we need to create sort of the same environment, the same feel here, and the libre initiative does that. we engage la tinos by talking about free market capitalism, why we should have a free and

limited government, that this remain a country of the people, by the people and for the people. and soby doing that, by engaging with churches and chambers of commerce and colleges and universities, wherever latinos congress redate and meet, we feel we can do that kind of proper outreach to get latinos to come out and vote and, in fact, control the destiny of the political and policy outcomes. now, obviously, we have a conservative perspective. there is, by every major, no argument that the democrat party has benefited from the latino vote for the longest time. every presidential race the republican party candidate has never enjoyed a majority of the hispanic vote. george bush set the high water mark at 45%. that's a begin. look, i think what's important here is that this has been a conversation within the latino community that has been dominated by the left. to their credit, folks on the

left have engaged, have outreached, have been in the communities, have seen the value of the growing demographic that you so eloquently spoke of in the latino community, and they've capitalized on that by sending resources and people and engaging the latino vote. so what i have seen as a political observer as well, arturo, is that on the conservative side there's sort of been a dereliction of duty of actually advancing the principles that you espouse that you believe are going to make societies better, that is going to improve the lives of those who are at the bottom. what are those policies that generate prosperity, and what are those policies that generate poverty? we should be having an honest conversation within the conservative community about those issues directly with the latino community. and so i think the republican party has sort of had a bad approach to this. they just felt that the

principles of economic freedom, the principles of the free market would sort of sell itself to the commitment. because look at who we say we are. 33% of us according to a pew poll say that we self-identify as conservatives. 32% self-identify as moderates and only 30% as liberal. so the vast majority is actually agreeing with you at any given time in the latino community which is, you know, the whole swing effect that you're talking about. but we haven't been courted effectively. and so if the left has the unions that are engaging hispanics, hollywood celebrities that are, you know, promoting progressive policies, liberal policies, if they have, you know, obviously, the party that has dedicated resources and time with that, if univision is running, you know, sort of left-slanted news packages on policy on an 8 to 1 ratio, the universities are much more liberal, then of course you're going to get sort of the

outcomes that you're getting. my point is this: latinos have not rejected conservative or republican candidates because of what they believe. because of the principles. they've rejected them because there's been an absence of this conversation about the virtues of the free market, about self-reliance, about hard work, about what makes america strong. so we aim to drive that conversation even, i think, in a state like texas where 44% self-identify as democrats and only 16% self-identify as republican. there are massive gains to be made by conservative candidates because there is, i think, there's been so much open field, you know, for the democrats for so long that now as conservatives who engage -- susana martinez, brian sandoval, marco rubio, ted cruz -- all hispanics who went up to the highest offices in the

republican party based on republican votes. there is opportunity if they engage. there is opportunity. and this, by the way, is the generation of ronald reagan that sort of came up and was influenced by him. so i'll wrap up by saying that the conversation needs to be driven by the republican party, by conservative candidates, and they actually stand to gain much manufacture than i think the dem -- much more than, i think, the democrat party. they stand to gain a lot from the latino community. which, of course, makes us powerful. >> thank you. now, do me a favor and pass this down to our friend cristobol, and you've noticed i've separated them by the pregnant woman. [laughter] >> they can't cross this line. [laughter] >> which probably is a good time to remind us all that, you know, what makes naleo is a special forum is the expression of everybody's perspectives and ideas, respecting all of them but also engaging and channeling each other. cristobol, now you have the --

>> i want to thank cristobol, because he leapt me his jacket. -- lent me his jacket. my luggage didn't come in yesterday, so that's bipartisanship, folks. [laughter] [applause] >> we may have different ideas about politics, but at the end of the day, we've got to find ways to get it done. i want to talk just for a few minutes and turn back if i could go to to the powerpoint be here, going back to the question about values and what brings us together. i will start with a very personal story. like a lot of folks here in this room and danielle and others, many of us have come from families of immigrants. my parents came to this country like many of your parents with very little in search of the american dream, and this is a picture of my grandfather and my mom be, my grant farm worker, did everything she could so is that my brother richie and i would have the chances that she didn't have. and she didn't get past ninth grade because she was work anything the fields, but by the time my brother and i came

around, she had settled the family in el paso and did everything she could, including work three jobs, so richie and i could have the chance that she didn't have. now my brother, richie, always wanted to be president. my mom said if you put your heart and mind to it, you can achieve anything you want to achieve, and ritchie said he wanted to be president of the united states. ritchie is autistic. he'll never be president, he knows that, but he cherishes his right to vote. he vote every single election cycle. he knows voting is his voice. at the same time and unfortunately, you mentioned this at the beginning, across the country there are states that are introducing laws that are designed to suppress the vote. they have a disproportionate impact on people like my brother, a disproportionate impact on our community, and upwards of five million people will lose the right to vote because of these attacks on voting. in my home state of texas, they passed a law that said if you have a university of texas student id card, you can't vote,

but if you have a concealed handgun permit, no problem. they're passed for purely political reasons. the right has a different can idea about values and principles, and they know that they can win with our community on those, to be perfectly honest. so what they're doing is they're shaving the vote and working to suppress latino political power. and it's the same reason why the right won't pass immigration reform. they don't want us to vote. i have to say that, and i'm sorry to say that. and if these anti-voting laws and efforts aren't bad enough, we have structural problems as well in our community that keeps us from building political power. we talked about this milestone in 2012 around record participation rates, but more latinos stayed home on election day than actually voted. that's a serious problem. and as a result of this lack of political participation, we have a dearth of latino elected officials. in this room should be a lot bigger. we should have twice as many latinos. with a country of 53 million and

only 28 representatives in congress, we should have twice or more than that. it's much worse than latinas. what that means is we have a vicious cycle. when you don't see your community reflected on the ballot, your faces, your voices, similar names on the ballot, you'reless likely to vote, so it further depresses turnout. we've got to change that, and we're falling behind on other demographics. i'm running out of time, so i'll say this very briefly. what happens if we're successful and we change this game? that's what led eva long gore ya and henry munoz, people i consider visionaries, to launch the project with the goal of building latino political power. and if we're successful, what can happen is this. you see a picture of the rio grand valley. the u.s. census in 2010 said this was the poorest census track in the country. it had 1200 voters, but only 150

of these la latino voters turned out to vote. they pressed the local officials to improve the roads, and what they were told was, why bother? nobody votes anyways. what would it take to show, quote-unquote, proof of life. and the local official said 300 votes. well, they took them up on that offer, and they turned out more than 500 voters for a local election. [applause] now, now watch this. this is that same road a year and a half later. [applause] that's what happens when you have latino political power, when you have accountability, when people turn out to vote. this we have to take to every city in the country, every state in the country, then we'll finally have true latino political power. and when we do, we have to do things differently. we've got to empower our voices, we have to support future leaders, and we have to invest in our own community through this leadership pipeline. that's what we're working to do at the latino victory prompt. and when we're successful, latino values -- which are american values -- will be

reflect inside the policies that drive our country forward. and what those values are are clean air and water, because latinos score at the top of the charts when it comes to environment, believe it or not. mite ins -- it means that we have access to adequate health care that's affordable and universal, access to an ample education, and the immigrants are equal participants in our economy and that they have good jobs that pay living wages. i'm out of time but let me just say this last thing, arturo. i started at the beginning by talking about my brother ritchie who always wanted to be president. when he went to vote in 2012, he didn't have the right id. luckily for him and many others, that law was not in effect that day. it is now, but on that day it was not, and richie was able to vote. by pure coincidence, the el paso times, our paper of record in el paso, it's our new york times, when he walked out, the el paso times got a picture of him.

we have it framed at home, it made the front page, and it was the best day of his life. so together for our brothers, our sisters, we've got to work together to pave that road. gracias. >> all right, thank you. [applause] okay, so we have a little bit of time to get into this and peel back the skin on the onion. i'm going to throw it first to the doctor. you know, what does the e her generals of these two -- emergence of these two institutions mean? you're been studying latino politics. because now we have these independent institutions certainly approaching the latino vote from a partisan political perspective and, cristobol, you run a c3, but you also have a c4 that i don't know if you've launched yet or not. libre initiative is a c4. so certainly coming at in this from a much more political perspective than an institution like naleo would ever do being

squarely in the middle as a nonpartisan organization. what does it mean in terms of political development? >> this is the life blood of democracy. and so the fact that we have these two gentlemen who have very different political perspectives, to me, is wonderful. i love it. i also want -- [applause] beyond that, beyond where they are on the political perspective, one thing that is very exciting for me is to see the eye on the money. because at the end of the day, in politics whether you like it or you don't like it, we run on money in this political system. and in order to run and be viable, you need that funding. so i think that this is really where the future of the maturation of latino politics lays, in having not just people who say i'm on this side of the

spectrum or i'm on that one, but literally putting their money where their mouth is. >> so money where their mouth is, okay. cristobol, your institution came out of the -- [inaudible] fund, right? this was eva longoria and edmund munoz's effort toss bring money into the political system. daniel, you even referenced economic power as really being part of the pillars of latino development. so money is a common thread here. where does money, you know, from your perspective you talk about developing economic wealth. what about money in the political process? >> look, frankly, whether it's a church, a chamber of commerce, any kind of institution, the accumulation and the sufficiency of capital is critical to advancing any kind of effort or messaging or advocacy that you want to do. so it is a life blood, you're absolutely right about that. and you're limit inside what you can do.

but it also positions you to do things you wouldn't normally do if you didn't have the resources, so it's critical that we do that. and i think as a community, you know, we have evolved, we have stepped up, you know, when it comes to being able now to seek contributions and donations from americans, you know, who are aligned. look, frankly, i'm a conservative. that's what i believe. that's what we advance. it's a game where, you know, you've got to get your ideas into the marketplace, and if people buy those ideas, then they're going to join you. so that's the game, and you need capital to do thatment. >> let me change this a little bit. just remembering, cristobol, last year on the stage one of your founders was here, henry money cross, in his -- munoz, in aiz capacity as a leader of the dnc. and he was talking about how latinos have benefited -- i mean, the democratic party had benefited from latinos' participation, but he also sat there and was faced with the question that i had is where are

the latinos in the cabinet,? where's the progress? he admitted that the progress had not been achieved. is the democratic party at risk of losing latinos to dan yell's efforts -- daniel's efforts because of the neglect or taking us for granted? >> so what henry also has said before and the reason the latino victory project is nonpartisan is we can't be taken for granted by any party or any candidate. we have got to build our own power. if we're the future of this cup, then we have to take that future in our open hands and get it done ourselves. that's also connected to this money question. i think it's so important that we talk about that, because our community is not used to talking about this question. the forturo fund was the first time they broke the code and figured out how do we get latinos engaged in the political process, and they flexed their financial muscle for the first time. for us, what that means is to be successful, to increase the number of latinos that are elected to get you more members,

arturo, we need to get active in the community. in many or of our families we have the eldest daughter whoever hits the milestones in the family, first lawyer, first doctor, eva loan gore or ya calls these the ceos of the family. we need to identify them, they're generally apolitical, they haven't been asked to give before. they'll be the ones that deliver the first latino or latina president of the united states. [applause] >> go ahead. >> really quickly, i wanted to sum it up. you know, after a lecture, you sum up the main points. [speaking spanish] we need to put into our community the notion of writing checks. the the anglo community is able to do that. they've just become accustomed

to doing it. it's not part of our rue tee, and it's -- routine, and it's something we need to start doing. i don't care if it's $5. if it's $100,000, great. but it starts with the routine. and we know from political research that once you do something, you're more likely to just keep doing it over and over again. so i think your organizations are really critical in starting that tradition of money giving. >> do you want to follow up? >> i was going to say a telling statistic in texas, in the state of texas, only 25% of latinos have been reached out to by a political organization or candidates. only 25%. i mean, it's no wonder that only 38% is the turnout rate for texans while in florida it's 63% for latinos. i mean, you're seeing a disparity there in messaging, in folks getting the word, informing the electorate a about the issues that matter to them that is going to improve their societies or their lot in life. so that's the effort that we're

involved in, is to get our message in to the communities. it is a marketplace of ideas, and money is critical. >> so let's talk about texas then, because this is, you know, it is the big prize, increasingly so. and as it continues, even a bigger prize in california. we picked up four congressional seats after this last redistricting, reapportionment largely because of the growth of latinos in the state. 65% of texas' growth was latino. daniel, this is a lot of effort by chris wol's -- cristobol's friends to turn texas from red to purple to blue. now, obviously, i think i you're probably looking at that -- you're based in texas yourself. >> right, correct. >> how are you going to stop that this. >> well, you know, obviously we want more hispanic engagement. we want more hispanics involved in the political process, but we want more conservative hispanics. that's not a secret agenda, that's what we're about.

and so turning texas blue goes against everything we're about. so battleground texas, of course -- [laughter] the it's a threat to us. and so we have to engage. we have to get into the communities. we have to work with churches, we have to work with chamber of commerces, we have to work with our partners on the ground. we are also creating a volunteer force. we're going to have about 3,000 folks that are going to be on the ground, you know, helping us to advance conservative principles, conservative ideas, talking about the marketplace, talking about limited government, these kind of things. we're already well on our way to enlisting those folks who are already helping us. we have offices and staff already in dallas and houston and south texas and san tone owe. san antonio. so that's what it's all about, it's engagement. and i think at the same time it's an opportunity to also engage our young, you know, and get them involved in the political process at a certain age where they can begin to see the political process from the inside. for far too long, the latino

community was on the outside looking in. and i think that's why -- [speaking spanish] back in the '60s and the '70s we had to march, we had to protest, we had to have our fist in the air because that's all we had. so it was uncouth, it was uncomfortable to do that, but that's the only solutions that we had. now we're on the inside. this is a new generation that is much more sophisticated that is now, you know, in the congressional staff offices, in the state legislatures, in high elected offices. let's use those resources, and let's drive the conversation. both on the left and on the right and now let's play that -- >> we'll come back to that, because there are a lot of latinos still marching in the streets and still holding sit-ins, and we'll get into the immigration topic in a second. cristobol, to you. are there realistic prospects of a blue texas? >> there's no doubt that latinos this texas are going to build latino political power and that it's going to change the course of this country, it's just a matter of when. for us, we're taking the long view. we're a start-up organization,

but with an eye on 2020 because in 2020 you have some things that rarely happen at the same time. a presidential election, a census followed by redistricting and latino majorities in the two biggest states, california and texas. we have to be ready for that. we have to be ready with our leadership pipeline, we have to be ready with resource, and we have to be ready to get latinos out to vote because if we're successful, we turn out a record number of voters, we elect a record number of latinos, we can help drive policy with latino values for the balance of the century. so it's so important we get everything in place now, including in texas, to be able to have that kind of impact. now, i have to take -- i have to point this out. first, i like daniel. i think he's -- >> he's got a nice jacket. [laughter] >> he's honest. he has the nicest jacket in the building. [laughter] and i think he's honest, i really do, and i think what he said is accurate.

i think the firm that he's hired to do his ads that are actually attacking latino candidates, we have so few, and i don't like to see libre initiative with koch brothers' money attack things that are champions for -- [applause] that bothers me. he's honest, but his ads are not. and the reason i point this out is we have a couple of people in texas that can change that state starting now. we've got pete in the rio grande valley area over towards el paso who's an incumbent who's really put his neck out there for immigration and latinos under attack. we've got the first latino statewide elected lieutenant governor. she's a rising star, and we've got to other rising stars across the country, but i would just like to ask you to hold your fire on our latino candidates. >> what cristobol is saying is an old tactic, to demonize the messenger. he says it as if the left doesn't, doesn't play politics

either, as if the left doesn't message, you know, to position their positions or their ideas. look, everything that we do is fact checked, everything that we do, we have to stand by it. everything that we do has to be ethical and above board. and so, you know, it's a game of let's have this conversation, and we're going to have that conversation, and we're not going to back down. because it's not about pete gallego, it's about his ideas. we don't want centralized government. we don't want collectivism. we don't want liberal policies that, you know, lean more towards dependency instead of self-reliance. we don't want bigger government. that's the idea, the battle that we're having. so let's have that conversation, but i'm not going to play the game of, no, i'm going to back away from latino candidates when their ideas are not good for the cup. and, in fact, i believe, strongly, that conservative principles are what is better for our community, and i will drive that conversation regardless of the sentiments just expressed by cristobol. [applause] >> thank you. >> all right.

express those sentiments towards nonlatino candidates. there's probably a lot of other candidates that don't reflect the values that you want to see that you could be going after. that's what i'm saying. >> and we are. >> they're doing a tremendous job for our community. to go after them, i just, i don't think it's right. >> i want to get into the issue of immigration now. and, vicki, i want to start with you if you can give us some background. your capacity working with latino decisions, would've been doing some -- you've been doing some, i think, some really excellent polling of the la latino electorate about this issue. and seeing this issue really rose on the agenda of latino voters which is something we haven't seen before. it's been an important issue for the community, but not for the latinos who show up at the polls until more recently. >> yes. >> right? so tell -- talk to us about that, and then we're going to go to our two friends here to see what it all means. >> so immigration, and, arturo, you mentioned this at the very beginning of your