dealing with drones or implantation and safety that surrounds that, to research that surrounds biomedical topics of all sorts, from infectious diseases like the ones you've been talking about to cancer to neurological diseases. and fundamental research that has to do with what goes on in the human body and what makes us tick, how we can produce that are chemicals, how we can improve the processes of engineering. our chemistry and biology department is number one in the nation in terms of research. our research covers the spectrum. that is part of our job. we're here to educate. we are here to push back to the frontiers of knowledge through our research and translate that knowledge to the benefit of the committee by building new companies, by working with companies in the community -- to the benefit of the community by building new companies, by working with companies in the community to build the economy.

to competeis it like for these federal dollars for contract echo what is the process like as well? guest: these are not contracts per se. host: grants. guest: these are grants by research initiator's. and as you know, after the funding wrapup in the 1990 through 2000 decade, funding has been decreasing. the competition for those dollars is very intense among investigators. only the very best research projects are funded. and often, not at the level we would like to see. i'm not so concerned about our investigators per se. concerned with the research capacity of this nation. we have built a wonderful research engine since 1950, 1960 host of adjustment as a leader in the world in terms of research and development and our since 1950, 1960.

it has made us a leader in the world in terms of research and development in our economy. and over the last 10 years we are slipping. we are slipping because we don't spend the percentage on research of our gross product that most of our competitors do. i think that is an issue. bringan issue that we into science and technology. our educational institutions don't see a future there and end up taking careers elsewhere. that'll be a problem for the country, five years, 10 years, 20 years from now. let's go to illinois. lori, you're on the air. a parent. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm calling because i don't think colleges are doing enough to lobby congress for help. elizabeth warren has been working to bring down interest rates on loans. my husband and i have about

$100,000 in loans. at a time we have paid all of that off, believe it or not, we will have paid over $30,000 in interest. also, the economy is doing better, but families are feeling it. i think truly part of the reason for that is families are drowning with this financial debt from colleges. also, i wanted to mention that maybe what we need to do is reduce the amount of years it takes to get a bachelors degree. at least, that could possibly bring things a little bit more in line with what families can afford. thank you. thank you for those questions. you raise a number of interesting points. as i said earlier in the segment, we are very concerned about the cost of education for our students also and we are certainly trying to do everything we can to keep it under control. there are some strictures where we are a public university, so there is -- there are

limitations to what we can do with public lobbying. there are some things we can do in some we can't. there are things we try to do all the time to make our the state legislators aware of the challenges that we face and the challenges the students face. to see if we cannot get them to help us with those things. we have had some response there. i must say, academics are not always well coordinated in making their voice heard, as some of our commercial neighbors out there in the business community. we could take some lessons from them. and you also raise the issue of the cost of -- the cost and its impact on families. i have four children and the last is recently graduated and still in graduate school. i fully appreciate the expenses myself. i'm not sure how many families can possibly sustain the burden they are facing to bring their children forward. what i can say is that there is no doubt that college education

has demonstrable benefit for the individual, for the student in society, as well as for society. we have the obligation to make sure that it remains affordable. that we can see our way to doing that, making sure that her but he has that opportunity. , she alsobarchi mentioned reducing the number of years it takes to get a ba. guest: yes, thank you. i think we are all answered about count ability at the college level. we tend to look too much at the input, the grade-point average, the sat scores. in fact, we need to focus on the outputs. are we graduating our students? are those students graduating within a reasonable timeframe? and somehow, we have to figure out whether they are succeeding. we don't have a good measure of that yet. host: why is that? anyt: because there is not

generally excepted measure of what that means. on theocus for a moment graduation time. most of us went to college and graduated within four years. nowadays, it's very common for students not to graduate for five years. that's a difficult time. y? ourn tell you that most of students here at rutgers are working, and many times to jobs. they don't have the luxury -- two jobs. they don't have the luxury of taking full courses to get out in the usual time. some are taking semesters abroad to broaden their education, or doing research projects for a semester. there are a variety of measures -- reasons why five years might be a measure that is better than four years. but we also need to make sure that they come to college prepared for college work. we cannot have students entering

college level that are not prepared for that work. the amount of time we are spending remediating our incoming students to what we think is a level that is able to benefit from college level courses adds to the time that they are in our institution. colleges.ust with the k-12 system that needs to be fixed as well. about that forlk more, but first, brent in california. go ahead. caller: this is the first time i've had a chance to break through. i have a question for the doctor. i think it's kind of unfair that he is a doctor one way or the other. [laughs] push forstill a big colleges to publish. i know my ex-wife got her masters, and later on her phd. and she's now teaching at unlv.

she managed to get herself published. i was urged by her to continue to go after my masters even though i just retired after 30 years of working as an investigator. is the push really strong for people to publish? does in this kind of give -- when the idea is within your field of study, there are just so many subfields that people can get into, isn't there a lot of competition and often a lot of differing views? guest: that is an excellent series of questions. i can subsidize with your approach. my wife returned to academia -- i can sympathize with your approach. my wife returned to academia after 30 years of running businesses in other areas. the adult scholar is an

interesting approach in education these days. but what we are talking about is not the individual who's gotten a masters degree in a professional area, or an individual who has gotten a professional doctorate, but the individual who has gotten a phd and is going into academia. those terminal degrees are designed to train individuals who will produce scholarship as we traditionally know it. and we measure scholarship in a variety of ways. are generating new ideas and you're going to get them out there for others to benefit from, then you're going to be publishing. if you are not publishing at all, that i would have to question whether you were doing what you were trained to be doing. having sat on the committees that make these decisions for tenure, it's not how many publications you've had . it's the quality of the publications, their impact, are people reading them, citing them? are they important contributions to the field? it's not a numbers game,

although sometimes it's portrayed that way. of the business of being a phd who is educating and doing research is getting your new concept, your new information out to the rest of the world. we will go to oakland, california. mary, a student there. caller: good morning. i have a question for dr. barchi . earlier -- on it earlier, about for his university there, the connection between future leaders, future ofdents, and the type environment they will have to be employed in, and keeping arma -- our country moving forward and being a leader. he laid out a good example for his university. but i don't see this across other universities as prevalent as it should be.

and in fact, we see people from other countries, which is not a problem, but he will from other countries are coming in and occupying those jobs that didn't studentsountry -- that in this country should have the opportunity to have. rate --. barchi, do you share that concern? good point.aise a i cannot comment on how other universities do it, but you do -- the idiosyncratic sees -- the idiosyncrasies of the way they do it, but i can tell you what we are doing here. one of our primary jobs is to create an educated workforce for the state of new jersey. but keep in mind, it's not a 121 tie -- 1-1 tie. if you look at college graduates 30 years out to my you find that well over half of them have changed fields two or three times.

jobs that are not necessarily what they majored in. education at the college level, the university level, is all about training people to problem solve, training people to assess information, to communicate, to solve problems in multiple ways and a variety of disciplines to be able to change and adapt with the needs of the time. and also, while we are educating our students, we are looking at two or three different tracks. we are looking at the ones that will train the leaders, those who will start new companies, be the new leaders in their field. that is not everyone. on the other hand, we do want to make sure that all of our students are capable of succeeding in their field of interest and moving ahead and contribute in not only to themselves and their families, but to the society within which they live. host: here's a question on twitter from dd, who says that firms are always saying they can't find workers with the skills they need.

universities training to skills employers require? dr. barchi, do you think that is more the role of a technical school and not a university? again, this is greta that asked the question, because i can't see you. it depends on who is making that statement. a it is industry that needs worker that is skilled in a particular kind of welding or assembly, that is not what we do at universities like wreckers. if it is a company that needs a atdent who has the -- universities like wreckers. if it is a company that needs a student who has the intellectual skills to assess the problem and adjust solutions and carry through in an organized way, we do train individuals to do that and i would hold us fully accountable for that. we need to be able to provide our students not just with the esoteric knowledge or the humanistic knowledge that makes us all citizens, but also with

the analytical skills that allows us to succeed in the environments that we want to earn our living in. host: the next phone call is from lorna in upper marble, maryland. i want to talk about -- first off, i'm happy that in 2009, the president came into the office and you begin -- and he redid how federal student loans were coming through third-party banking institutions, which was double dipping money from the students. and causing students to go into more debt. the banks were being paid by the students and the banks are being paid by the federal government. that was a policy that was --tituted in the early 90's in 1982 under the reagan administration. and since that time, the federal government had depleted funds from the budget.

they should have gone into public education and to universities throughout the united states. this cost universities to become skeletonized in a lot of ways in which no institution can without the resources they need to educate their students. on the stateside, -- the state side, having republican lawmakers coming to the states in the early 1980's again, coming in and depleting our public schools of the funds from the budget, the funds and resources that they needed to --ction, skeletonized thing skeletonizing them so they cannot operate properly today. this was not seen before republicans came in in the early 1980's. host: ok, a lot there. dr. barchi, something you want

to weigh in on? guest: you raise a lot of points there. i will not comment on the political aspects of who was in office when, but you made one big point about universities. that is, you cannot provide a quality education if you cannot provide a quality -- provide the of the structure. realceived the same in , the same as the early 1990's. that is despite the fact that we have 14,000 students in addition to what we had then with no additional support for that. workers used to receive 70% of its operating budget from the state. now it's around 20%. and we are not unique. that is the state of play for all of the big public universities. there is a limit to where you can go.

you cannot provide a quality education without someone helping to pick up the bills. as public universities, we don't have huge endowments. we don't have huge private sources of revenue. education is a benefit for the student, but also for society. it is a critical factor. we are training the citizens that will be part of civil society. we have to agree that society as a whole has to be for it. that is the part that bothers me the most. keep cutting the budgets, and yet turning back to the state universities and say, don't raise tuition. where's the money going to come from to educate students to -- the way we need to do it? it's a huge problem. host: what do you think the outcome is if we continue on this track echo guest: i can tell you -- continue on this track? guest: i can tell you what we

are doing here. we are working very hard to diversify the revenue sources at the university and doing it as quickly as we can. we're looking for ways to build public-private partnerships that are win-win for the public sector companies and universities financially. upare looking at ramping contributions from many alumni and supporters, once they realize how critical this issue is. we're looking at increasing the amount of federal grant activity we do, which can help offset some of the costs. mainly, we are looking very hard at how we reduce the cost in the university. how we take all of our corporate services and bring them into the 21st century in terms of the most effective, most efficient way of providing the surface -- service at the least possible cost. we have the ability to reduce cost, and at the same time we are asking people to help us with additional revenue. host: we are talking to the wreckers president dr. robert barchi as part of our campus

tour this morning. i want to talk to you about the eagle institute at wreckers. what is its role and mission? guest: this is a wonderful gem on campus. it is one of many institutes that we have. this particular one is focused on the interface between our students and people in public life, the legislators, senators, folks who work in our and bring them together to exchange ideas, to educate our students, to help them think about a book policy and build the bridge between the university and the public government sector. in potomac,et maryland, a parent there. go ahead. colleges'm looking at for my daughter, and i'm concerned with how much it costs

. 30 years ago when i applied to university was $5,000 for tuition and $5,000 for room and board. he looked at so many institutions and it's over tuition and $15,000 for room and board. ofjust shows how the cost education has really outpaced the rate of inflation. it seems to me that we need some bold solutions to address this problem. you are mentioning a couple of ideas, but it seems to me we are just kind of going around the edges of the problem and not really tackling it in the way that it needs to be tackled to permit families to not incur so much that and to still allow a ladder from -- a ladder for prosperity for lower income people. motherlet me say that my was the first in her family to

go to college, and she went to the university of pennsylvania. and i have kept on my desk in a little glass holder one of the cards that was her mission -- her admission card to class. it was her tuition to the university of pennsylvania. $200 per semester. just to keep reminding me what the cost was for sub of course, for her family, too. -- just to keep reminding me what the cost was. of course, for her family, that was a lot of money. tuition, what it costs to come to a university is one of the revenue sources. but a university like wreckers with a budget of 3.7 billion -- like wreckers with a budget of $3.7 billion a year, that's a large enterprise. you have to manage all across the board. you cannot expect tuition to be the alternative revenue store -- source when everyone else is not providing their share, whether

the state government or the federal government or private philanthropy. we cannot put that burden on students anymore. part of the question is, how can we reduce the cost to students? that is question number one. question number two is, how can we reduce the cost of education writ large? in many ways, that means redesigning the traditional university. it means providing education more effectively and efficiently using distance education for students who are in residence. for example, students at wreckers to are living on campus full-time are often taking one or more of their courses at least in part by computer. the time they spend in the classroom with our faculty is a higher quality time. ourgnizing that 60% of budget is personnel. faculty are very extensive. support staff are a major part of what we need to do. we have 26 million square feet that we have to

maintain in this university. anything we can do to reduce the cost, while we improve the effectiveness of delivering an education, that is something i need to be done. that is independent of the tuition. but if we can do that, we can help to keep the tuition costs down. host: i want to ask you about players and coaches at rutgers university. many of -- many no ray rice from rutgers university. here is a headline. time, -- to,was the decision made

they say "the race ray rice from was that decision made and how difficult was it? you upfirst, let me back a little bit. we take a very firm line on the ethics of our athletics program. it has been one of my primary concerns since i came here. i have a zero tolerance for any activities in our athletic program which i do not think mean our standards of ethics. we train student athletes. 95% of our student-athletes do not play professional sports. they need to be trained for a college degree that leads to an educational opportunity. and i'm proud to say that the academic performance rating and graduation rates of our student athletes ranked nationally in the top 10%, the very top of the big ten. and we say we are doing. -- and we do what we say we are

doing. anybody who does not live up to the standards will be quickly out of the program. we have no tolerance for that. in regard to mr. rice when he was at rutgers, and i must say he was only her for three years. he is not one of our graduates. and that was over seven years ago. he is a star player. we have had many star players since then and we have them on our football team right now. but we don't hold up for public accolade in our ring as individuals -- in our arenas individuals that we do not think portray the ethics of the university right now. that is a decision i make all the time, and one in this case that i did make. and i continue to stand behind that decision. permanent, then, your decision to take down his image, videos, etc. from the stadium. guest: it is not about ray rice. it is about who we choose to use as exemplars for our students and athletes. the entire cast could change

next year or next week. it's not about an individual. it's not about mr. rice. it's about who we want to use as the best examples of that particular individual. whether it is number 52 up on the stadium sidelines there, or one of our student athletes who does turn pro and is having it pro career. is not point, is to rice a pro football player. it would be an anomaly to even have that video and include him at this point. but that is not the point. we want to emphasize who we believe are outstanding examples of our product as a student athletes. host: rome also. -- role models. guest: exactly. to a student.go go ahead. caller: i a former student vice president. to sit on our governing

board for nine institutions. we actually had voting power as students. my question, one thing louisiana has been doing a lot that concerns me, and you mentioned it, which is high -- tying higher education to workforce needs. while i think it is very important that state also look at the workforce, i'm also thatrned as to the move higher education is working toward only certain areas. i come from louisiana which is a very industrial area of oil and natural gas. there is a big move to make more and push back on our degrees in political science, theater, history. what is the balance that higher institutions should take when it comes to looking at the workforce needs of their state or region, but also not forgetting the true purpose of higher education, which is to

create a well-rounded, well-educated, critical thinker for society? i think it is more important to create the next innovator, to create the new apple or imb, rather than to create a worker for any of these major companies. what is the balance between workforce and higher education? facilethat was a very and educated question, which virtually gives the answer that i would give. very well expressed. , if i can, another slant on it. i agree wholeheartedly with virtually everything you just said and i don't think i could say it better. when you look at the educational institutions in the state, you often have major university -- a major university, a flagship university. you have a series of state universities and state colleges and eight series of -- and a

series of two-year colleges. the coupling of the mission and each of those levels and the immediate needs of the state work force is different. that question has to be answered very differently for a two-year college. .r a four-year college or the flagship university of the state. i think the flagship university should be concerning themselves with the future needs of the nation in exactly the kinds of ways that you talked about, and adaptable and educated workforce that can be business enough tomorrow's civil society, and can be the innovator, the problem solver. whereas it may be that a two-year college must be more sensitive to the immediate needs of the business in its region. i'm not in favor of tying tightly the educational programs of the university, a four-year , to thety like ours workforce needs as determined by

some sort of survey. remember, those surveys reflect people's opinions 2, 3, 4 years ago and then they finally get to a university that might change its programs for students that years inuate 2, 3, 4 the future. and no one can ten-year term out what the bills are going to be, so that kind of a coupling in my opinion does not make any logical sense at all. we need to be training individuals who are going to be adaptable for the needs of tomorrow and the businesses of tomorrow and more importantly we need to be training individuals who can help to govern our society and can be participatory in that government and really determine how we make decisions tomorrow. that is really critical. i think we are saying essentially the same thing and i must say my congratulations to mike fitz, west taken over as your new president at tulane. he was one of my colleagues and you have got yourself a great president. host: we are all out of time,

but i want to thank you and the university for allowing us to come there today and for you to talk with our >> next up on c-span, we take you live to the senate for that center for american progress in washington. donna edwards will be the keynote speaker on a discussion on the underrepresentation of women and people of color in elected office. less than four weeks and 12 election day. panel thatn on a includes donna hall, the president and ceo of the women peeredrs network a ways to get more women and minorities to run for public office. it should get under way shortly.

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[no audio] in just a moment, the center for american progress in washington come a hear from donna edwards, the keynote speaker on the underrepresentation of women and people of color in office. she is facing nancy white, running in the maryland -- nancy hoyt, running in maryland. this should get underway shortly.

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>> waiting to hear from donna edwards, maryland democrat, talking about the underrepresentation of women and minorities in congress. this is the center for american progress in washington. we will take this opportunity to tell you about one of more than 100 house and senate debates. the pennsylvania governor's race with tom corbett facing tom .olfe that is tonight at 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. at c-span.org.e

[no audio] >> hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. the executive vice president of external affairs here at the center for american progress or to i'm so pleased that you are all with us here today. you may know that women of all 18.5% of the just

united states congress. women of color makeup and abysmal 4% of the congress. in directers exist contradiction that women make up half of the population and are more likely to vote than their male counterparts. this afternoon, we will hear about the reflective democracy campaigns new research which shows that this persistent underrepresentation of women and women of color exists throughout the country at all levels of government. over the summer, the reflective democracy campaign finished an unprecedented new database of more than 42,000 elected officials throughout the country. their survey showed the great disparity in gender, race and ethnicity between our elected lawmakers and those whom they represent.

i would like to thank donna hall, president of the women donor network of which the reflective democracy campaign is a part and brenda carter, director of the reflective democracy campaign for bringing their new research to share with us today. thank you so very much. [applause] at the center for mac in progress, we believe our growing diversity is an asset and that whenemocracy is strength elected officials reflect the constituencies they serve. evidence suggests there is much to became from encouraging a greater number of women and forle of color to run office as well. studies including the one we will discuss today continue to suggest that places with more reflective lawmakers produce more progressive policy outcomes. this data from the reflected democracy campaign is a new starting point for a necessary

discussion as we look ahead, not just to november midterm elections, but more importantly, 22016 and beyond. dress and understand, ultimately refers the chronic underrepresentation -- address and ultimately reverse the chronic underrepresentation of women and people of color in politics? donna edwards represent maryland's fourth district, comprising portions of prince georges county and anne arundel county. she was sworn in in june of 2008, becoming the first african-american woman to represent maryland in congress. i find that stunning and startling. the first african-american woman to represent maryland in congress. enjoyed a diverse career as a nonprofit executive director of the national network to end domestic violence. if she led the effort to pass

the violence against women act that was signed into law by president clinton. hase being sworn in, she secured a number of legislative accompaniments to improve the lives of working families in her congressional district and around the country. her first act as a member of congress was to add maryland to the afterschool suppers program come ensuring access to nutritional suppers to after school and youth to after school and youth develop programs in schools located in low income areas. during the health care debate, edwards secured a that holds insurance companies accountable for a justifiable rate increases. she has also introduced legislation to expand research and a moment, domestic manufacturing and infrastructure spending to great jobs and grow our economy. she was also the first member of an house to introduce champion a constitutional amendment to overturn the supreme court's citizens united decision.

we cannot be more honored to have congressman edwards here today to share her perspective on this critical issue. welcome congresswoman donna edwards. [applause] thank you very much. good afternoon come everyone. i'm so delighted to be here at one of my favorite organizations . i cannot tell you what it means to have cap at the table making sure those of us who are policymakers really have the right stuff in front of us to do that job. thank you very much. i cannot say enough about women donors network. i came to know them many years ago in my time in philanthropy. i have come to know the woman of , including donna hall.

been able to work together on a number of issues over the years. i appreciate your leadership. what a better time could we find to discuss leadership and leadership development and reflective democracy? in fact, they are the same thing. when i think about -- as i was biography,o my own my story is a story of what it means to have reflective democracy. wons stunned as well when i the election in 2000 eight and people said to me, you are the first african-american woman to represent maryland in congress and i denied it. that cannot possibly be true. how could it be true that in a state that was the home and centerpiece for harriet tubman and sojourner truth and frederick douglass? how can it be possible that i'm

the first african-american woman to represent maryland in congress? and yet, that is the question as we look across the united states that we have to ask ourselves because increasingly around the world, we are coming in on the low end when it comes to leadership that reflects our population. i want to talk about what that means for women. i am on the political side, the recruitment chair. during this cycle, we recruited of our top-tier candidate, a majority of them were women. i don't think it's an accident when you have women around the table helping the conversation about identifying candidates, talking to people, that you will come out with an awful lot more women. i'm proud of that, but it's not enough. although it is true that in this congress, we have a majority of democrats in the house of

representatives that is more representative than it has ever a lookf you take together at the aggregate of african-americans in congress and women in the congress and lgbt members in the congress, we are more a minority majority congress on the democratic side than we ever have been. but that is not the whole congress and it is not at large. the difference when you have representatives at any level of government that better reflect the population and the communities we serve, the better public policy will be. issue not be an accident or a surprise that my first act of congress was to add maryland to the afterschool suppers program.

part of that is because of my experience as a mom. the experience of a single mom, a struggling mom, to put food on the table and make sure when my son went to school that he had enough to eat. it was thinking on that experience along with marrying o the experience of so many in my congressional district. they should not be a surprise ast the priorities for me the chair of the democratic women in the house and the cochair of the bipartisan women's caucus that i put at the front and center of equal pay for equal work. making sure we have one day of paid sick leave. focusing on things like child care and providing access to quality affordable childcare. i want to talk about that for one minute because we know that two thirds of america's workers

who work for the minimum wage are women. an awful lot of those women are women of color. it makes a difference when you're at the policy table about whether that becomes a priority or not. that is reflective democracy. when you think about things like equal pay for equal work, i was with a group of senior women just yesterday. over 100 of them. i started talking about equal pay for equal work. the overwhelming majority of them are not working anymore and they are retired. most of them are either living on a small pension if they were fortunate enough to receive one or they are living almost exclusively on social security. what does it mean for those women the fact that we have not made troy that we have equal pay for equal work and that is not front and center of our policy agenda? they entered their retirement

years having lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in income, unable to contribute to their own retirement security because they did not make the same amount as the man next to them who had the same education and experience. we need leaders at the table that reflect those experiences and are able to contribute to the policy discussion to make sure those policies become reality. i had an experience when i was raising my son. i was really struggling around the issues of childcare and paying for mortgage and those things. i remember when i ran for congress, there were some people , "you should not talk about those things. people don't want to hear about that. it will make you seem to soft and no one will want to vote for you." nothing could be further from the truth. ability to speak about my experiences as a single mom and really contributed

to the conversation about why it is that i should be elected. those are the conversations that can come to the table when we have democratic representation that reflects our communities. why do i think that childcare is important? i was one of those moms paying one dollar a minute for every minute i was late picking my son up from childcare on a fixed income when i cannot afford that extra dollar a minute. in washington, it's more like $18 a day if you are stuck in traffic. i had to get what i already knew as a mom to be substandard heldcare for my son and ended up with meningitis and i almost lost them. isking about these issues exactly what the idea of reflective democracy is all about. frankly, we can have the kind of democracy that all of us aspire

to and want if all of our voices are at the table. 18.5% is not enough in the congress of the united states to reflect a population of a majority of women who need to be serving in elected office. it's just not enough. it's not enough that we've gone through what, 238 years of our country and not had a woman at the highest level as president of the united states and as commander-in-chief. it's maybe been 238 years too long for that. maybe 238 years too long that we only have a very small percentage in the congress of the united states. we have to do better. when i think about my african-american sisters in the congress, we are a small cohort. an awful lot of

different conversations come withat our table african-american male colleagues. it's not enough for us to say that we can elect people of color into the congress. it's time for us to elect women into congress. finally, i would like to close by sharing with you this story. the story of a little girl who is in her preteen years with glasses and braces and no one wants to take out those pictures of any of us in middle school. i had one of those pictures . i began to look at leaders like barbara jordan and i thought, my gosh, i want to be like them. who had at my mom worked so hard all her life, taking care of six children and trying to grow them into responsible human beings and i

marvel at that because i had enough of a challenge trying to grow one child into a responsible human being. i think about my grandmother who struggled when she was farming with my grandfather and really struggled to put food on the table and when the farm was not working, she would go and clean houses and she never had more than a high school education, but she was one of the most brilliant, smart women you would ever meet. we have these legacies in our country and it's about time that our political leadership actually reflected the kind of legacies we happen every single family and every single household -- have in every single family and everything will household. thank you very much for having me here today. i'm hoping to sit in on a bit of the panel discussion. thank you to the women donors network for the research that you've done that can really inform the direction we take.

-- we are about to finish one election season. going into another election weson, wherever it is that find ourselves come it's time that we stopped just asking women to run. it's time that we really support and get behind them when they do. more than that, to stand behind them when they lead. thank you very much. [applause] >> good afternoon, everybody. i ame other donna said, the other donna. my name is donna hall and i have the privilege of serving as the president and ceo for women donors network. it's wonderful to have you here today because for us to have it's aere with us,

celebration that takes me back to the time when i first met her. andere going to chile michelle was elected the first time, the first elected president in south america. there was a group of 15 of us who traveled there. she made it a campaign promise that half of her cabinet would be women. when we went to see her inaugurated and she asked her cabinet to stand up, it was a remarkable thing for all of us 10-20he net states to see leaders stand up who are women. follow-up to one of those questions. how do we really get women and people of color into office? as i mentioned before, i'm the president and ceo of the women donors network it very national network of 200 members. we strive to make structural strategic changes through

catalytic and collaborative funding and through working in partnership. that's what brings us here today. who leads us? this is our topic today. america was founded on the ideal that all people are crated equal and have a stake in how are nation's government. -- nation is governed. it's not enough that women and citizens of all races have the right to vote. every american must have equal access to lead as well. today, we are here to confirm with hard data come the extent of a very serious problem. the problem that our elected officials do not truly represent the populations they serve. our research reveals what we all knew, white americans and particularly white men maintain a powerful hold on the political representation at all levels in

our country. been concerned that women and people of color do not have a real voice at the tables of power. we have learned this over and over again as we apply a lens to all works we engage in. a lens that overlaps race, gender and class as it applies to the problems of our time. this concern is not limited to election office holders. it also extends to the halls of many of, the arts and the large and powerful nonprofits and foundations. we all agree that there is a growing awareness of this reality and a lot more discourse today than there used to be about these persistent patterns in our society. for us, we have decided to start with a narrow focus on elected officeholders as a strategy to reflect the democracy. today, we're here to describe that we now have an open source

database that has compiled demographic data, including race and gender for the first time on the 4200 officials in net state to the county and down to large cities. what you will hear and see shortly tells a very stark story. one that will surprise you more than you think. it suggests that in order to have a real democracy, we must work purposefully to remove structural barriers. work started, but we can't do it alone. we invite you to partner with us as we move this work forward. and next two weeks, we will be releasing more data and an interactive tool that will allow anyone to see how their state stacks up when it comes to representation of women and people of color.

we will issue a toolkit for taking action. in 2015, we will focus on working with partners to develop projects that contest different solutions for tackling structural barriers that will result in a more reflective democracy. before interviews brenda, i want to take a couple of seconds to a college people here today who have really helped us with this work in getting us to this stage where we are. wendy forthank hosting us today. cindy, who i see in the back. they worked with us throughout 2013, helping us to distill our focus and provide the overall structure for this reflective democracy. we could not have done the data projects you are hearing about had it not been for the great folks at the noi and rutgers university center for american women in politics. s andpinion research firm

.ur communications finally, i would like to a knowledge jennifer, who is the and is reallyr managing this large initiative. let's get to the meat of our conversation. , would like to bring up brenda our campaign director. she joined us in january. she has a rich history of campaign work and working in electoral politics. she was the perfect person to take over and i'm delighted to call you up. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, donna.

lucky or maybe really unlucky to be the person who gets to present the results of ofeffort which was conceived and carried out by a large team of people, many of whom are here today and some of whom have in up all night getting our website and other assets going. i really appreciate your work and i want to second donna's thanks to all of you. today, i would like to do three things. first, on going to talk about what our research revealed. second, offer some preliminary thoughts about what it suggests. about where we go from here. let's look at a short video we put together. if i can operate this. wondered, whatr does america actually look like? let's zoom out from the people we see in the media and the

people we talked to everyday and look at the big picture. 314 million of us live in the united states. 51% of us are women and 49% of us are meant. 63% of us are white. 37% of us are people of color. our country is changing fast. but are the people who represent us, from city council, to congress, keeping up with that change? do we live in a reflective democracy? we did some research and here is what we found. study 42,000 elected officials who represent us from the county level all the way up to congress. if a reflective american populations, our elected officials should look like this. it actually looks like this. 71% of elected officials are men. 90% are white. 65% are white men.

that means men have twice as much power as women. white americans have three times as much power as people of color and white men have eight times as much power as women of color. of the population controls 65% of elected offices, is it is a prize most americans feel our democracy is broken? to learn more about the data we have collected, visit us online and share data with your friends and tell us how you think we could become a more reflective democracy. [applause] >> just to recap, we looked at the people who hold elected office from the counties of the national level, and we matched race and gender using both self-reported information and

voter file records. we found that 90% of those officeholders are white. only 63% of the population is white. 71% of them are men, compared to 49% of the population. so again, this is what it would look like if it were truly reflective. this is what it actually looks like. white men who are 31% of the holds 65% of these elected offices. effectively constituting a vetoproof minority in our political system. we have all heard plenty about the demographics of congress. look,ted to take a deeper diving into the demographics of local level elected office. when we started the research, some of us, including me, held out hope that we would discover

a more diverse and gender balanced pool at that level. for the most part, that hope did not become reality. women are slightly more well represented in the state legislators and county officeholder 25 and 30% of those, respectively. but they hold only 21% of statewide offices and 19% of congressional seats. the level of color, of representation at the local level can only be described as dismal. people of color hold only 7% of statewide offices and 9% of county offices. their representation in state legislatures is slightly better, but still less than half of their share of the population. i have spent a fair amount of race, gender,bout

and power. i am rarely accused of being an optimistic percent. that, i wasall of shocked by the numbers. ant they show us is imbalance of power so stark that if we saw it in another country, we would undoubtedly conclude that something was very wrong with that lyrical system. that judgment should apply no less to ourselves. what is going on here? what is the cause of the problem? there are three main places we could look for the answer to the question. first is in the nature of local office itself. proponents of the view that this is the cause of the problem argue that there is something about running for and holding political office that is so exceptional that it really cannot he held to the same standards as other occupations or fields. goes,all, this argument being a politician is not really like having another job. it is an unusual thing to do and

tends to attract people with an unusual set of skills and interests. so we cannot really expect politicians to look like america . it is worth noting that other fashions that are just as ash lies and unique, if not more so, are significantly more reflective than elected office. for instance, doctors, professional baseball players, and recipients of doctoral degrees. can it really be the case that politics is so different? the second place we can look to find the cause of the problem is to voters. in this line of thinking, evil of color just cannot succeed as candidates because voter biases are so strong. but the research simply does not bear this out. when they are on the ballot, female candidates succeed at the same rate as men. the research on candidates of color, while it is slightly more complicated for reasons having

to do with the way it is usually focused on specific ethnic groups, and, because the overall sample size is so small, but still, the research on candidates of color points in the same direction. there just is not the evidence to suggest that bias in the boat -- in the voting booth is significant enough to explain these numbers. look for place we can the cause of the problem is at the underrepresented people themselves. that is, is there something about women and people of color that explains this? there are several variations on this line of thinking, but they tend to fall into two closely related theories. the first one is attributed to an ambition gap to women, and less often, two people of color. in general, this line of argument holds that women do not want to or cannot run for office because of family responsibilities or that they

just do not like the world of politics. ,he second line of argument closely related again, this is the existence of what we might call an engagement gap. that is, people of color adhere -- tend not to participate in politics in general. they do not vote and they do not take -- participate in local structures and this causes their underrepresentation in elected office. i cannot do justice to both sides of the question. for the moment, draw our attention to a couple of key points. first, women have voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1996. second, black women have turned out to vote at a higher rate than any other race or gender subgroup in the last two national elections. there is work to do to improve registration and engagement,

especially among communities and -- committees of color, a lack -- on the political process is certainly not the whole story. i would argue that those of us who appropriately greet with skepticism claims of ambition gas and other skills, for instance, that women just do not like fields of math and science, or that they voluntarily opt out of job, should be similarly careful on -- about relying on this to explain this imbalance of political power. it is worth noting that the fields elected officeholders the resemble in terms of racial and gender balance is silicon valley, which, as we all know, has recently been the subject of a lot of scrutiny and criticism for it the exclusion of women of color in the ranks. focuses not on the uniqueness of politicians, not on the voters, and not on the

women and people of color who are excluded from political office. the reflective democracy campaign is focused on the political system itself. how might the systems of candidate recruitment and advancement, controlled by gatekeepers like clinical parties donors, contribute to these lopsided numbers? how does the composition of electoral districts advanced some demographics over others? what is the role of specific institutions that, when present, help develop candidates? who has access to the relationships, money, and networks needed to leverage a political career? it should be no surprise that our political system, like so many other systems in our andety, reproduces reinforces centuries old hierarchies. it is built on relationships and networks, on organizational clout, money, and gatekeepers. much of its operation takes

place out of public view and it is creating, as we have seen, a democracy that is far from reflective. well.here is good news as in this case, it comes from voters themselves. at the same time we are amassing a database of elected officials him we undertook a copper has a a look opinion research project. we wanted to understand whether and to what extent americans perceive this problem, how they think about it, and whether or not they care. as part of that multiphase research project, in august, we surveyed voters at home. findings. key first, americans understand there is a problem with the demographics of political leaders. a majority of the voters we polled are concerned about the lack of women and people of color in office there at perhaps even more to the point, most of them said the phrase that best is writes our current representatives is "an old boys

club." most of them think, however, that the best and the brightest is the phrase that best describes who our elected leaders should be. second, americans actually want to do something about the problem. a strong majority of voters, regardless of party identification, support policies that help elect more women and people of color. support is especially strong among younger voters, women, and people of color, but is not limited to those groups. even among white men, 66% support actions to help elect more people of color. a third finding them are public opinion research was perhaps most surprising. voters recognized the way the political system is itself is a significant cause of the problem. when asked to identify significant obstacles to elected office women and people of color

face, a majority of people cited three major epistemic variables. -- barriers. stereo --cal party's failure to recruit women and people of color. and three, a lack of access. biasesd above what other voters may bring to the voting booth, and whatever individual tendencies women and people of color may or may not make them decide to run against pursuing elected office, americans recognize our system of recruitment, support, and promotion of elected leaders is structured in a way that favors white men. needlieve this is where we to dedicate our efforts if we are to change these numbers and move toward a truly reflective democracy. that is the challenge in front of us and it is certainly not easy. we are proud of the act we have wrought a new level of trans parents into the problem and

that, for the first time, we now have a comprehensive is line, which means we can measure whether and how fast we are making progress. we are making the data publicly available on our website and later this month, we will be releasing a national representation index, which will rank states by the extent to which their elected leaders reflect their population. we look forward to researchers, advocates, and peoples of all kinds, digging into this data, making discoveries, and, we hope, using it to propel change. [applause] >> that was great.

thank you for that great presentation. thank you all for being here today. it is exciting to see a big and enthusiastic crowd here at i know we have got great material to talk about and a lot to go over. i will introduce the panel and we will get on with it. brenda is the campaign director for the reflective democracy campaign at the donors network aired in her many past lives, she worked and also led and -- when she was getting a doctorate at yale university. she is the communications director here at the union of hospitality workers. in addition to everything else she does, she teaches courses on the economy at brown university. of aloria is the president national, multi-issue organization dedicated to electing progressive champions at the state and local levels.

her leadership, the organization has grown to have eight state offices. establishso worked to the racial justice campaign, a program to prioritize the election of candidates of color. prior to this, she was the political director from 1996 to 2001, where she fell out their first nationwide pro-choice voter file. she has worked on campaigns at all levels of government, especially in her home state of minnesota. william, an associate professor of history and director of the studies institute at the university of connecticut. he wanted me to very -- to be very short on his file but it is too interesting to do that so i will keep going. his articles and essays appeared in the new yorker, the daily beast, the washington post, and the root.com. he's the author of substance of hope and to the break of dawn, a

freestyle on the hip-hop aesthetic, a finalist for the national award for arts writing. he has a forthcoming book, "antidote to revolution: the struggle for civil rights." i have been asked to mention our twitter #for the event. -- the hashtag for the event. out for allis laid of us, basically moving from critique and observation to change. first you could talk about a little bit more observation and critique. why do the numbers look this way? they are so dramatic and start. and then, concretely, what are the steps we have to take? >> centuries of oppression and disenfranchisement might be the

obvious reason for why the numbers look the way they do. in all seriousness, if you are a person of color and you cannot even vote, are you going to run for office? there is reality in the fact oft there is a ripple effect regressive policy reaction in this country that plays into the -- into this. it all seriousness, that is a fact. -- in, you know, we have have a list of reasons. let's start with pivoting off of what brenda talked about. the lack of access to political networks. that youis a business win by shutting other people out . it is the very nature, to get my people to the polls to keep your people home and if i am lucky, i even get to keep you off the

ballot in the first place until i clear a path for my victory. that is the overall environment we are working in and how we succeed. we have got a system of democracy that is a winner take all system and it is ruthless in how it excludes people. changing that system, so you could look at some structural as research that shows women do better in multimember districts because they tend to be more positive campaigning environments, it is easier to say we have one-man, one-woman, to put people on the ticket to create a balance. but then there is also evidence that shows people of color do not do as well in multimember districts, that white people tend to crowd the ballot and push people of color out. there is conflict when you look at that as an alternative.

there is some evidence to show proportional representation, cumulative voting, ranked voting. you see this in a lot of localities across the country. hundreds of localities use this and it has shown an increase in people of color getting elected very structurally, those are some of the things we can do. who is ino change these systems, so, where you -- who is in the state party leadership, the caucuses are doing most of the leadership . who is staffing those caucuses? , you havet example got to have the right person at the top in these systems that are making this a priority. >> you wrote so beautifully this summer about what was going on in ferguson, missouri, after the

shooting death of michael brown. you talked about ferguson as a areocosm for what we talking about today, for all of the trends we are talking about. you also said it was a precursor. talking about ferguson as a microcosm, how do we see this problem of unreflective democracy having played out? >> first, thank you for inviting me. i am happy to be here today. one of the things that became since spending nine days in ferguson in august, and i'm going back on sunday, one of the things that became immediately apparent that what was going on there was about so much more than what happened to michael brown. it made that circumstance almost inevitable, that everyone continued to talk about it. i would be remiss to say the from the playoff game last night, where people were talking about michael brown in protesting about there not being

a likelihood of justice, and people shouting, "go back to africa" from the baseball stadium. that is the context from was -- from which this happened. it is easy to think of ferguson as an outlier, a particularly retrograde place, a throwback to a different era of american life. a piecelook at this in last week, cliff was really important, about the number of counties and towns and small cities in which there are black majorities, substantial communities in which there are communities of color, but are not reflected by the city council, we see this happening in a lot of other places. partly because of how the elections were stated, how they were organized, whether or not they are publicized, whether they are off your elections were and issues of transients

people not necessarily -- all of these things coming up in theersations in ferguson, other is i think we struggle to be optimistic. rings being more reflective. but the experiences that this is not necessarily the case. this did not happen accidentally. protests in north carolina and the voter id laws and shelby versus alabama and , the decision that came from the supreme court last summer, these things are not accidentally death -- detrimental. it is simply the reality. to changeeed

attitudes first and then structures will change, or do we >>d to have attitudes change -- change? yes i would go for changing structures. these things are hard to read. it is hard to say what you think they want you to hear. i would say, you know, culturally, we are there. you see a new american it -- a new american majority. and the attitudes of one yet, we are so far behind. a saying in the offices, do not recruit people there you will have to lobby later. we need the structure to catch up. classic general, the law follows

the organizing. it points to the necessity of mobilization and public demand for change on this. said, this is not an accident. the people who control the structures will change the structures when they feel they have no other choice. learn from examples of people close to oregon where the power structure is different? right nearby, the same demographic? >> right. both of these men is how it is from a cost of st. louis, so close that you can read st. louis into one of them without even knowing necessarily that you left this the of st. louis. while i was there, got into conversations of elected leaders from small units -- small municipalities. they had a few years ago a

.olice force entirely white black population was 80% black. it was the current mayor who told me, off the record, that she has had the experience of being roughed up i police. that is what led them to run for mayor and political office. they, in a concerted way, set out to change the demographics of the police department. when i talk to the police chief there, he said he went to high school and encouraged high schoolers to go to the police academy. he went to the graduations and found people who were about to graduate and did not have a police department yet. he said, would you consider working for us? he also went to other municipalities and said, would you be interested -- we would be interested in having you, perhaps think about working here.

now, the police department is about half people of color and half white. both the mayor and the police chief talked about the way in which this has facilitated a better understanding in the community. it. is the positive side of the other side of it is that i am a new yorker. i know a black officer involved in the shooting, we all remember, in 2006, the african-american man on the verge, the next before his wedding destiny before his wedding, and 600 bullets were shot. they killed him, injured one of his friends gravely, and they were unarmed. there was an african american officer present. during this. there have been other high-profile incidents who have -- that have been other officers of color. i do not inc. it is simply epidermal change that falls into place.

you also have to have structural changes that say we believe there is a limit on police authorities. the police are not the law. they have the power to enforce the law. there are distinctions that we somehow lost track of. the last thing i will say is in , i did see, when people began tear gassing, before they began tear gassing, the first night, protesters, there were a smattering of black officers who were there and several of them had covered their faces with bandannas or scarves and some people said they did this because they actually live in and they would have to face criticism for what they were doing. much morepart was ominous, that these were people who would cover their faces as if they were about to do something they knew would be

beyond the bounds of what please officers would be. >> that is really striking that you were able to be there and see that. you, we'reg to talking about structural change, but at the same time, it happens on a personal level, through people changing institutions from within, sometimes in a one-on-one way, as you described. you said something into this, that you are willing to really get up close and personal and described what you had seen and practiced within institutions, even by ostensibly well-meaning people, they could end up keeping out women of color. people of color. >> in order to be perceived as a viable candidate, you have to have your own personal network, you have to either have or be part of or be accepted into a broader political network, you

have to have access to donors, there is all this work you have to do. progressive. i run an organization called the progressive majority. we recruit people to run for office all across the country. candidates of color and women and women of color, obviously, and we started the race with to prioritize and not marginalize the recruitment of people and tell her and making it a priority within our organization, from the very beginning. our firste often problem. i would say to the candidate often, if you are relatively will have to get through our advisory council. community,rogressive then the democratic party.

then we can start talking about republicans, or the opponents, whoever they are. but you have got to get through these hurdles first. often, and our advisory councils in our eights are comprised of some of the most counted and well-meaning political people across the nation. these are well-meaning folks. but the progressive movement, just like the broader political movement, is mostly led by white people. mostly white men. it probably looks a lot like that. we will bring someone in and the first thing will be, never heard of him. well, that is not surprising here that is why am introducing him to you. and we keep going from there. all, if they at andnot, within this orbit, we have had to do a lot of

convincing, even within our own organization, to get it across, it has gotten so far -- i have a favorite story i'd like to tell. a staff person, we had a fight that escalated very highly in one of our states and one of our staff people called me and said, gloria, i cannot do this. i am a white guy. i'm not used to fighting over race. i was like, that is your job. basically, what happened is we had recruited a native american woman to run here and she was very talented and had served in her state administration and was quite accomplished and had her own network. immediately, oh no, it will not work. the, the party decided profile of this district, and that is the other thing we do that you do not know about, before we even start finding a candidate, we profile for what the ideal candidate in this

district should look like. some people like me get to decide that. which is sometimes a problem. and then, we have recruited this woman, and the party decided no, they needed a white man and a tough on crime white man and they found this white top and got him to run. we kept going and our candidate was outperforming on every metric, 5-1 on fundraising. by every measure. is to try to assert our candidate with all the powers that be. this escalated to the point where i had to fly out. party folks were going to cherry pick our donor list and going to our major donors and telling them that gloria is prioritizing rate over viability.

i literally had to fly out and our state director was doing all the work you do on the google front, and i had to meet with our donors one by one and say, you know, you have to know me for 2.5 seconds to know that is not true. i have fired my mother and my best friend in my lifetime. prioritize anything over viability. [laughter] -- >> thatis sweet is tweeatable. do we have to take radical steps? >> a couple of things. one, it was a not so radical step we took care to we changed our criteria for who could be on our advisory council. we have the political directors. you had to represent some clinical entity with the

constituency behind you. we changed that to say individual leaders could be on as long as they had individual constituency behind them. so community leaders, urging leaders, people that "the to a more diverse pool of inferential people who could be on a committee. there were things you could do like that to open it up. yes. i think we need to call it out. i mean, people were shocked that i would fly across the country and go knock on their door and say, here's what i'm hearing. are you believing this? as a donor to our organization, and you have shown a commitment to our mission, do not let them bully you this way. that is what it ultimately was, in that case. you have to stand up to it. be left forst

people of color and women to stand up to it. it has to take all is very crises that to me before with your anecdote, i'm a white guy and i cannot do this very you said, politicians who are already in office who are white have to get beyond their comfort zone and talk about this very i wonder if you could say more about that and if the two of you could comment on this, how we make this a topic of conversation for everyone, when air is not that level of discomfort on the part of white people? >> unfortunately, i think circumstances will make this such that they think of a way of presenting themselves and forcing us to grapple with them. current time had is, that situation, we would not have had to grapple with the reality of sexual harassment in the work is in the way that we do.

ferguson, my most recent frame of reference, i think what we're looking at there is reflective of a broader set of trends. talking historically for a minute, we saw in 1967 the commissioner for that said there in therge scale riots country, disturbances, that where a product of the schismatics vision of african-americans from opportunity where it we have kind of reform, people consider them to be superfluous, the supreme court effectively said the voting rights act was discriminatory against white governors. so we have debates around things like affirmative action and whether or not people of color along in any position in which we are, which we found a niche. i see that in academia all the time.

the kind of question that is implicit in that is, if you remove those circumstances and replicate the circumstances that you not have the same outcome? do you not produce the same that resultedems in this cyclical situation? think because we have a historical amnesia, we keep doing rings that results in negative outcomes in the say, if we do this, we put our hand on the fire and we get burned earless moved our hands away from the fire. five minutes later, we are going, it would be interesting to put her hands on the fire and see what happens. about have talked before what people are not or are willing to talk about. one thing people often have trouble with america is talking about structural change. your research had good results, basically, but you also said it

is sometimes difficult to get people there and you saw it even in the course of doing the research area i wonder what you have seen about people's comfort level with these topics and what ways of approaching the topic of underrepresentation they are comfortable with or not. you touched on some of this in your remarks before as well. >> the conventional wisdom, i think is that in order -- in order american cannot really grasp structures and systems in that it is too complicated and arcane and we cannot get into that. i think that really shortchanges most people. it is true most people do not want a two-hour policy briefing. but, i think there is actually far more opportunity to move people in their thinking on this than we give them credit for. it's sort of stands to reason, in a way, that if you just look at the numbers, and you are not somebody familiar with the way

politics works, which most people, why would they be familiar? it is a strange and arcane world. if you look at the numbers and leave it to your imagination why you will comeway, up with easy answers like, maybe women do not like politics or, i do not know. maybe people of color do not participate. of course, we do not need to get into a fight as to whether there is some truth at the edge of that. in our experience research we briefly described here is that people get it. it does not take a two-hour briefing. it does not take a dissertation on the topic. specificname structural barriers, people say, that makes sense to me. the difference in the level of understanding, are there some people who get it more than other people, between party women, ifn or men and

you are somebody who has not experienced structural barriers holding you back, are you less likely to see them? true women and people of color perceive the structural barriers more clearly and more readily than other groups. but not -- i think this is not as complicated as we like to think .t might the -- might be i think we have a lot of room for changing the way people think about it. >> you were sharing interesting thoughts in the green room right before has about what the parties are or are not doing right now. you had in strip -- interesting observations about what the republican party is doing on the state level, and i think that is worth sharing, what you are observing right now. >> the party apparatus on both sides of the aisle is the primary candidate recruitment operation.

they tend to have a narrow approach. you are the recruiter and you have got your database in front of you and you're looking at who in the party is the next went down, the next one down, the local party or whatever. to outsideo not go groups. that is something we need to change. our groups need to be more proactive in bringing people into consideration and parties need to be more mindful of reaching out beyond the structure. the second thing i think is important, from the party perspective, is money. what i shared in the green room is that on the republican side, the republican state leadership committee, like the state level committee for state legislative seats, like for congress. we have the equivalent on the democratic side, the democratic

leadership campaign committee. since 2010 come you all know the story leading into 2010, the $40 million spent, the red map strategy, the massive investment in state legislative in order to slip 21 chambers in 2010. big deal. ince then, they have spent in 2012 cycle, $3 million just recruitment of women and people of color in this cycle, 2014 cycle, they spent $6 million. so $9 million just since 2010. exclusively on the recruitment of republican women and people of color. we know, whatever your party affiliation is, that this is not

the grand old party of yesteryear. these are going to be very conservative folk. and they have recruited, as a result of this investment, more than 150 people of color and more than 300 women, and they have increased the largest major increase, they have increased it since 2010, including 2010. there is major activity happening on that side and major invest in. nothing is equivalent to that on the democratic side. money toot regret state parties. significant, ironically, they have a name for the female program and not a

name for the people of color program there a right women right now is their program here at there is also one at the calledsional level project growth. a similar investment is happening at the congressional level. there is just nothing on our side. donna just not get $3 million to recruit people of color. it just does not happen. we have got to try to figure out that in balance as well. traditionally, i maybe 1200 state legislative seats held by women and republicans have 636. democratic women have always done better. but they will catch up yet i know from our business, we recruited 200 candidates a year and we do not have a $600 budget. it will not be that hard to catch up the kinds of

investments they are making. >> is fascinating. we will probably have a lot of questions from the audience are all of you brought up new and interesting things today, which is great. i want to end with you. your writing, looking at it all together, you present an interesting vision, looking back historically there it you can read as glass half-empty or glass half full. we have all of these signs of ryegrass in terms of having a ,lack president, a black mayor and you write since 1970, the number of black elected officials and the night is it has increased nearly tenfold. we have these signs of progress on the one hand. but the glass half-empty side is terrible. it is really, really bad in terms of the numbers and also in the shootings of michael brown,

nonisolated -- isolated event, necessarily. how do you balance it in your mind? where do you land? optimism, but realistic optimism. who looks at our contemporary state of affairs, who is a skeptical person, could say, well, there is all this organizing all of these candidates, for more black political elected, it does not look anything like it did in 1965. and it culminates in the election of this individual, barack obama, to the presidency, and how did that work out for you? that would be a significant question when we look at things like voter repression efforts.

at staggering incarceration. i do not think people thought the election of a black president would fix everything but i think it would presume the point at which a black person could be elected, it would signify that these other things had already been resolved. the fact that those two things were capable of coexisting, it makes it will go back to the drawing board and say, what else is there? there isn't it -- an additional failed tongredient we recognize or common the most cynical or pessimistic you, that this is as good as this particular system is capable of getting, the people who represent local minorities, or, even if demographics change, possibly the political majority. we have seen this in other places. believet said, i simply my perspective as a historian is over the long-term, people who have been of conscience and have

been of sincere effort, have won more often than not, not necessarily undefeated, but a good enough record to make it to the playoffs, as i say. that is where i land. >> a great note to end on. pivoting to questions. i want to ask about voter suppression, but maybe someone in the audience can ask that question. >> i wanted to make sure i get on the mic. i originate from missouri. i know you say is the outskirts, but just like everybody just -- but everyone knows, , there iseryone knows no differenc, thtwe is no difference between st. louis pd and ferguson. i would never acknowledge ferguson, excluding the fact it is now on a map. first of all, i want to thank you all for bringing the information in a scientific manner to the forefront.

this is the only way to legitimize. obama has been in office, i have been calling for a conversation because i do not know what to tell my children. i do not want to create elitist. arei can tell them is they better than white people. i am sorry. i do not believe that, but i'm theseaying, to combat systemic barriers and institutions that keep us at odds, currently welcome a conversation that is opened, on the table, and honest, so i can have good working tools. basically want to thank you all for having the conversation and i look forward to being any part of it. >> i think it is a really important point. there wasd in march, an equity conference. as far as i can tell, it was one of the first of its kind.

four elected officials and government workers. createall about how to government that was equitable. or than 500 people attended from all over the country, including many mayors and elected officials. we can prompt our local governments and these conversations do not have to be had at the national level. we do not need congress to have this conversation. it is something that can happen wherever you left. if you have a good mayor or anybody who wants to sponsor some like this, we encourage the proliferation of those kinds of gatherings. although in the back. >> how are you doing today? . am from national public radio in 2012, there were 13600 and 25

registered voters in ferguson out of an eligible voter base of 1500. ends todaytration and ferguson, incidentally. thereon commissioner says were 128 newly registered in an 11% increase was possible, we could not have had more than 11%. what is the biggest event? why do you think it was only 1% as opposed to 11? >> one thing we see very mindful of, is anything that comes out about the number of registered voters. anybody who has been in politics for five minutes, knows that those numbers have to be closely scrutinized. the initial report was that there were 3000 newly registered voters. that was revised to 128.

the office of elections there said they just made a clerical mistake. i am not prepared to accept the number is actually valid. that is first. the second is that when we talk about turnouts for previous election, a municipal election about two weeks prior to a very racially contentious municipal election two weeks prior to michael brown's death. the black sled out there with 6% and the way turnout was 12%. we have had a run with those numbers. they do not quite refreshed -- reflect the entirety. the election prior to that was the 2012 presidential elections. of black turnout was 71% eligible voters and the waste turnout was 72%. ,his has everything to do with or a great deal to do, with off year elections and whether or not people even know there is a

primary coming up. given that this is overwhelmingly democratic, those are the things we should keep in mind, but i certainly would not go anywhere near giving credibility to a hundred 28 credibility number. it has been much more thoroughly scrutinized. >> on the ballot in ferguson, it is not indicated what party candidates are with. ofre seem to be a lot structural elements that create a great deal of confusion one way or the other. yes? >> sorry, i am making you run all over. i am from the women donors network. gloria, i would like to ask you, specifically, this issue about getting women and people of color elected, some people have asked, is this just a matter of adding women and people of color

and stir and we solve the problem? or to your point about on the left and the right, recruiting and running candidates, women and people of color, what are the set of values we want to a dress and speak about as well, so it is not really just about race or gender, but about a bigger conversation we need to have? >> a great question. said, and, as brenda somebody noted it earlier, women and people of color win at the same rate as men, as white men. shotwe run, we have a fair . as long as we have competitive districts, that is another structural issue, gerrymandering and creating legitimate competitive districts, that is another thing to address. we also notes where there are more women and people of color states that are

generally more progressive, and i do not mean liberal, but more forward thinking and placessive's, they're in where there is a broader conversation. there is generally some kind of role of government issue here, where there is a more positive role of government and it is a more positive influence in people's lives, that makes a change that helps people, women and people of color will help do better in that environment. whether from the legislature or the government or whatever, or whatever -- or whether that is the dialogue happening in that context. there are absolutely, you know, and it is a plethora of issues that are really central for us to deal with right now. tends tocal candidates try to keep their heads down and avoid. as donna said earlier, it is familyhe role of women

friendly policies, not just pro-choice. it is about the overall anything that benefits women. if you want to yet women voters, talk about leave. immigration, incarceration, all of these issues are issues that really matter for these communities. older, white male candidates will not talk about these issues. >> i grew up in st. louis county. . would agree with her ferguson, to me, is not a good example. there were no blacks in ferguson. it progressed over the last 20 the majority box. a different dynamic than the rest of st. louis county. i want to ask the question, none of you talked about the behavior

of majorities. in prince george's county, where i live now, where it is majority after american, majority african-american electorate, i mean, people in office, i do not think there are any non-african-americans on the ballot where i live, except at the state level. so part of this is, you know, this generalization of people of color. we have to realize that as minorities, the expectation we will be able to overcome so many barriers when we are such a small percentage of the population, you know, the whole generalization of people of color is problematic. i want to ask another question. talk about recruitment, one of the things that troubles the money issue, which you

did not talk a lot about. a lot one young people to volunteer. a lot of african american kids are not in a position to internshipsr unpaid , to do any of those things. some of it is the policies of organizations that do not really consider the communities they're working with. if you could just comment. >> interesting questions. the idea of what is asked for people to get involved politically, is there any effort to change that, but i'm wondering, as well, what you're describing in prince george's county, are you aware of structural differences and how things are happening politically, let's say, in maryland, that could cast light both on the positive and the negative in other places? >> i am not sure.

again, another structural reform, because of financing, arizona is one of the most conservative states in the country. is due in part because of the clean elections law. i think that could be another thing that can be considered and also address this issue of money and politics and whether or not people have the resources to run. on the question of how knowities act, we do african-americans have a harder time getting elected in non-majority districts. but latinos actually do not. -- they perform pretty well in those districts. color asthe people of a monolith is a problem, as you said. >> quickly, on the issue of majorities, there is a kirk

little thing about american politics that is counterintuitive but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. that, black people specifically tend to fare better in context with very few other black people. that, black people barackwere shocked when obama won iowa because i went had so few black people. winning iowa was not nearly as hard as when he misses the the. in 1988, jesse jackson won vermont. that has a smaller black population than iowa does you if people do not believe that you are representative of an actual group whose interest they see as antithetical to their own, they're more willing to -- and if you are a marginal n