According to the Denver Post, charter-school advocates are warning that a union victory could have far-reaching statewide implications, given the current push for reform at the federal and state level.

Their claim:

If union-backed candidates were elected, the district’s momentum toward improvement would suffer and that could ruin Colorado’s shot at a share of the U.S. Department of Education’s competitive $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” fund.

The $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition, which has been billed as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s greatest tool for reform, will grant stimulus funds to states that develop comprehensive reform strategies in four areas:  standards and assessments, data systems, teacher hiring, firing and evaluation, and turning around struggling schools. Duncan has made it clear that the money will not be divided equally among the states.

But winning candidates, reported the Denver Post, shrugged off the assumption that they will slow the district’s—or state’s—work toward education reform.

Still, there’s no questioning the fact that the Denver Public School District—historically, one of the state’s most innovative—now looks to be dominated by candidates who have spoken out against the district’s reforms.

Media reports in the days leading up to the election framed the battle as one between unions and charter school supporters. In large part, this was because candidates appeared to either be receiving donations from reform-minded Denver businessman Thomas W. Gamel or unions, including the Denver Classroom Teachers’ Association, the Colorado Education Association, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the Colorado AFL-CIO.

Gamel was a notable—and generous—contributor to the non-union candidates, spending more than $90,000 on Mary Seawell’s successful campaign over Christopher Scott.

According to EdNews Colorado, union-backed Scott had a less-than-graceful response to his defeat:

“I hope Mr. Gamel is as personally committed to DPS and our children as he is financially,” Scott said. “As we like to say in the consulting business, ‘You buy it, you own it.’  We will hold Mr. Gamel accountable for the actions of the board members his money has supported.”

But union-supported candidates Nate Easley and Andrea Merida won the other two seats—Merida with the help of scary union-backed pamphlets (pdf) about her opponent’s support for charter schools. In the same overblown language that the GOP used in Douglas County, a 527 group called Coloradans for Accountable Reform in Education (CARE) warned voters that charter schools are the enemy of neighborhood schools.

“Why can’t your kids walk to school?” asked the pamphlet. “Because charter schools across town too often siphon tax dollars away from local neighborhood schools.”

Though CARE will not have to release fundraising information until after the election, its spokeswoman told EdNews Colorado that the group receives money from the Denver Classroom Teachers’ Association and the Colorado Education Association.

Merida told EdNews Colorado that while she welcomed the group’s support, she had no idea who CARE was.

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State Rep. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs. (Photo/Bob Spencer, The Colorado Independent)

Colorado Springs Republican Kent Lambert waylaid state AFL-CIO Director Phil Hayes at a House committee hearing Tuesday, asking out of the blue whether Hayes supported “the secret ballot.”

Clearly in reference to the debate over the controversial Employee Free Choice Act, Lambert’s question stunned members of the committee, who were there to discuss Speaker Terrance Carroll’s bill to limit fraud in the ballot-initiative petitioning process. Hayes was testifying in favor of Carroll’s legislation.

“I don’t think you have to answer that, Mr. Hayes,” said the committee’s chairwoman, Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, who pushed her microphone out of the way and looked down the table at Lambert.

The packed hearing room was suddenly silent, the sparks of temper a drastic change in tone from the notably affable proceedings that preceded it.

“[The question] speaks to the credibility of this witness. I think it speaks to his credibility,” Lambert said defending himself, clearly upset.

“Are there any other questions for Mr. Hayes?” Todd asked.

Hayes had been testifying that the AFL-CIO had “self-identified” many of the problems in the initiative petitioning process that Speaker Carroll’s bill aims to address.

“We feel we can meet the standards outlined in the bill and that other groups can as well.”

Hayes took particular issue with the practice in Colorado of hiring third-party petition circulators. In one instance of the practice played on a video at the start of the hearing, a man working to collect signatures in support of Proposition 49 subcontracted the work to a 14-year-old. He paid her 75 cents per signature and told her to say she was 18 if anyone asked, the legal age in Colorado to collect petition signatures.

Hayes said that the practice was unethical on many levels, including from organized labor’s perspective.

“She’s a minor and he’s giving her this cut-rate wage,” a fraction of what the man who hired the girl would receive for her work, Hayes said.

After the hearing, Hayes said he would have liked to answer Lambert’s question.

“I wanted to but we were instructed only to speak to the bill. I dropped off a card with [Lambert] later and told him I would talk to him about [the AFL-CIO position on the secret ballot] anytime.”

The surprise question didn’t rattle him, he said.

“I’m a labor guy. I get beat up all the time.”

The AFL-CIO, a large coalition of labor groups, has announced what has been called the “largest ever union get-out-the-vote drive” in history.

Union members and their supporters — including a total of 250,000 volunteers — will operate in 20 presidential battleground states, including Colorado.

The volunteers have already made 70 million phone calls and knocked on 10 million doors for Obama, and higher totals are expected before Election Day.

On Thursday the Colorado AFL-CIO will also operate phone banks in Denver, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Unions members in the state are also planning to canvass in the same cities over the weekend.

It’s not just businesses on the lobbyist bandwagon.

While corporations pay thousands of dollars for representation at the capitol, labor groups are hip to hiring their own lobbyists to influence the legislative process.

But that’s not to say they’re equal. Labor is in the minority when compared with the long list of lobbyists registered to work on behalf of businesses, and many unions are represented solely by the Colorado AFL-CIO.

Despite this, work is being done beef-up Worker’s Compensation, to protect whistle blowers in the healthcare industry, and to assist low-income state employees with healthcare costs. 

In February, SEIU supported bills to enact whistle blower protection for health care workers and to reallocate tobacco litigation settlement money to medical benefit premiums of low-income state employees.

The former was sent to the Governor’s office last week, while the latter is waiting to be heard by the House Appropriations committee.

SEIU also supported Senate Bill 10, which would have required nurse-to-patient ratios in hospital staffing plans. The bill was killed by the Senate Health and Human Services Committee after the sponsor, Democrat Sen. Lois Tochtrop, alleged unethical lobbying by the Colorado Hospital Association.

The Colorado AFL-CIO opposed a bill that would have created a junk mail “opt-out list,” due to concerns over the impact the measure would have on postal workers. The proposal was killed earlier this month by the House committee on Business Affairs and Labor.

The CO. AFL-CIO also supported measures to allow injured workers to choose their own physicians and to provide Worker’s Compensation coverage for firefighters who contract certain types of cancer. Both bills have been passed by the House.

Predictably, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) joined SEIU in supporting the tobacco settlement money plan, along with a bill outlining a state employee and employer grievance process which set to be heard by the House Appropriations committee.

While the Governor’s veto of House Bill 1072 has caused anger from the labor community, lobbying at the capitol on worker’s issues is still trucking along on a steady pace with a good success rate.