Targeting voters
Sen. Richard Miranda said the Arizona Latino Legislative Foundation plans a retreat in October to set priorities for the next session and the next budget.

Hispanic lawmakers formalized their caucus last month, according to a senior Democratic senator.
The Arizona Corporation Commission approved in April the creation of the Arizona Latino Legislative Foundation Inc.
The aim of the foundation is to encourage the education and registration of voters and their participation in the electoral process, the documents said.
In short, the foundation will work on, among other things, increasing the Hispanic voter base in the state.
And for good reason.
The state’s Hispanic population has been growing by leaps during the last few decades. It comprised only 18.8 percent of the population in 1990, but 10 years later made up roughly a fourth of the state’s 6 million residents.
Hispanics are the majority in two counties in the state.
In 2004, the Phoenix-based Business Journal reported that Arizona had the fastest growing Hispanic population in the nation, quoting a report by DATOS 2004, an annual survey of the Hispanic market released by the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
“As you know, in our communities sometimes we don’t get the amount of voter participation that we should get,” said Sen. Richard Miranda, D-13, the foundation’s director.
Miranda’s assessment reflected studies showing that while the Hispanic population of eligible voters nationwide is estimated at 13 million, only 7.5 million registered to vote in 2000, and 5.9 million actually voted.
The Pew Hispanic Center said on its Web site that in 2000 some 16 percent of eligible voters in Arizona are Hispanics, 80 percent of them born here.
Arizona’s Latino caucus has been meeting for some time now. But it was never formalized, according to Miranda.
Recently, its members heard from a speaker who discussed autism and how it is affecting Latino communities.
In establishing the foundation, the state’s Hispanic lawmakers struck a path taken by Latino caucuses in other states.
“Through that non-profit foundation what we do — what my hope it’d do and what other Latino institutes have done — is to develop leadership among young people (and) do outreach to communities,” Miranda said.
The caucus will have a retreat in October to set priorities for the next session and the next budget, Miranda said.