In Cillizza’s Friday Senate Line, he accurately frames next year’s Colorado Senate race, where appointed neophyte Michael Bennet is a virtual unknown who can’t dodge major issues, like the Employee Free Choice Act, forever. But there’s no sign of a credible Republican challenger, able to raise the big bucks and storm a state that’s been trending increasingly Blue. But Cillizza so clumsily blurs the details, we wonder whether whoever has been feeding him his Colorado scoop has been on vacation.

Here’s The Fix’s entire entry on the Colorado Senate contest, which holds as the sixth-most likely seat to switch parties in the 2010 election, safer for the incumbent than Pennsylvania and a bit riskier than Ohio:

6. Colorado (D): This race is frozen in time — Republicans bash appointed Sen. Michael Bennet (D) for not taking a position on the Employee Free Choice Act even as they struggle to find a serious candidate to oppose him. The pieces are all in place for a competitive race in Colorado — Bennet is virtually unknown statewide and will have to (eventually) take stands on issues like EFCA that will provide fodder for a Republican opponent. But, no such Republican opponent has emerged. The two most likely candidates? Former Rep. Bob Beauprez and/or Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier. (Previous ranking: 6)

In some circle, EFCA still gets the blood racing, but a divisive issue to take down a senator in Colorado? Not so much. As Cillizza almost concludes, it’s Bennet’s refusal to take a stand that causes more potential problems, leaving some Democrats lukewarm and Republicans sensing weakness. Still, early discontent with Bennet among likely supporters seems to have subsided, while his Obama-centrist approach might be tamping down some potential fervor among opponents.

But The Fix’s real whopper? Maybe former members of Congress automatically qualify as strong potential candidates in the World According to The Washington Post, but Bob Beauprez hasn’t been a serious contender to take on Bennet for months, if ever.

Still nursing wounds from the bludgeoning he suffered at the hands of Gov. Bill Ritter in what could possibly qualify as the worst campaign in recent Colorado history, Beauprez emerged earlier this year from what is, by all accounts, an exceedingly enjoyable retirement in northwest Colorado to float his name for a gubernatorial rematch.

When that proposition failed to catch fire — or, more accurately, caught a few belly laughs — Beauprez let it be known earlier this spring he might consider a run for the Senate. That trial balloon failed to even inflate, though Beauprez did perhaps score more appearance touting his book than he would have if he hadn’t been a potential candidate.

As savvy local political observer Eric Sondermann told The Colorado Independent a couple months ago, “There’s anything but a Draft Beauprez movement going on.” Beauprez’ abysmal showings in recent Republican straw polls — scoring below the margin of error if he appeared in the results at all — only confirms this.

Of course, anything can happen in politics, but even radio yacker Dan Caplis is a better pick for inclusion in Cillizza’s ranking of the “two most likely candidates” who might face Bennet. Eleven months before the state GOP convention, Aurora Councilman Ryan Frazier and Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck are the others.

Severe economic inequality has persisted for decades in the U.S., but the current crisis is bringing things into focus. Unfortunately, while Wall Street excess and the corporate jet-setting of Detroit executives have dominated headlines and garnered plenty of justified outrage, the other side of the inequality coin has been largely neglected.

Our labor laws desperately need to be revamped. Currently, Capitol Hill’s biggest battle for workers rights is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would make it easier for workers to form a union without fear of employer reprisals or intimidation. The corporate executive class is lobbying hard against EFCA by claiming it revokes workers’ rights to a secret ballot in union elections, but the bill would do no such thing. As the law currently stands, employers can force workers who want to unionize to hold an election in order to actually establish a union. EFCA would require that a union be legally recognized as soon as a majority of workers sign cards saying they want to unionize. Union leaders are still elected by a secret ballot, but the election is permitted to take place later on, preventing employers from using the election period to bully their workers out of unionizing at all.

Writing for In These Times, David Moberg illustrates the commonplace peril of employer intimidation under the current organizing process:

“In 2005 [electrician Dan Luevano] and most of his fellow workers at Ries Electric near Denver asked their boss to recognize the Electrical Workers as their union to help resolve problems. The boss called everyone in and threatened to fire them if they voted for a union. Luevano said he would, and the next workday he was fired. Though the National Labor Relations Board reinstated him, his boss isolated him and cut his hours while continuing to violate labor laws by fighting the union.”

Workers and unions have pushed for EFCA for years, but when it comes to the economy, the federal government reacts fastest to problems on Wall Street. In Salon, Andy Kroll outlines the generous subsidies the government has paid to companies that drove themselves into the ground, effectively rewarding the economically destructive behaviors that caused the current crisis, while neglecting the workers whose hours and wages have been slashed as business credit tightens ups.

Blake’s own membership in the community is vague. Is he speaking only as Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce president (does that make him an investor, owner, manager, worker… spokesperson?) or is he also speaking as a top member of the board of CSU, a major state employer?

And what do the CSU business community members make of Blake’s lobbying efforts? CSU is the largest employer in Fort Collins and probably in Pueblo, too.

In addition to 1,520 faculty members, CSU employs 1,775 administrative professionals, 2,200 state-classified employees, 1,560 graduate assistants, and 180 postdoctorates.

Does the CSU business community oppose the Employee Free Choice Act?

According to Ken Nufer, Director of Human Resources at the Pueblo campus, the university’s state employees voted for union representation last year but campaigning for the Employee Free Choice Act has been minimal at Pueblo. That’s likely the case, he said, in part because the university is exempt from the collective-bargaining laws put in place last year by Gov. Ritter and at the heart of the battle over the EFCA.

Blake has been rumored to be on the list of candidates for the new and controversial CSU stand-alone chancellor spot, which the university is hoping to fill by July.

According to the Denver Post, Blake wrote a letter to Bennet that said the Employee Free Choice Act “is divisive and unnecessary and, most importantly, it is wrong for Colorado.”

** UPDATE: Spokesperson Michele McKinney says that “the board of governors at CSU has not taken a position at this time” on the Employee Free Choice Act.

That brings backers one step closer to the necessary 60 votes required for the Senate to hear the legislation, which would then only need a simple majority vote to pass.

Sargent posts:

Udall spokesperson Tara Trujillo confirms to me that Udall will cast the first vote in favor of EFCA. “He believes it’s important to have debate on big issues,” Trujillo says.

“Mark has always said this is not a perfect bill,” she adds, “but he believes workers should not be intimidated in the workplace.” Trujillo said it was uncertain what he would do on the final vote. “We don’t know what the final bill is going to look like,” she said.

As for other Democrats, the Udall move comes on the heels of Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s declaration she’d vote against allowing EFCA to the floor, while Virginia Sen. Mark Warner — considered a centrist in the vein of Udall and Colorado’s other senator, Michael Bennet — said he’ll support bringing EFCA to a vote.

EFCA, described by opponents as the “card-check” bill, would make it easier for unions to organize. The bill has occasioned apocalyptic arguments from both sides and is seen as a key test of labor’s strength with the majority Democrats in Congress.

Sargent parses the growing support for an EFCA vote in light of the near certainty backers won’t reach the required 60 votes to forestall a filibuster:

Opponents say these declarations are meaningless because the pro-EFCA forces won’t get the needed 60 votes in any case. But there will likely be compromise negotiations, and the more Senators labor has in its camp, the less concessions labor may need to make. This isn’t to say labor has the leverage, just that these machinations do matter.

Meanwhile, Bennet is the target of a broadside from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which blasted the Democrat on Tuesday for telling constituents he’s working toward seeking “consensus” on the bill.

“Despite having been a member of the Senate for less than three months, Michael Bennet has clearly mastered the skill of Washington doublespeak,” said National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Amber Wilkerson in a statement. “With our nation facing an economic crisis, Coloradans are looking to their elected officials for real and decisive leadership — not politically calculated maneuvers. Senator Bennet should stop trying to have it both ways and show some real leadership on a critical issue facing Colorado.”

A spokesman for Bennet’s campaign declined to comment on the NRSC attack.

It’s an open question whether aiming for consensus qualifies as Washington doublespeak — or is precisely what voters want in a lawmaker. In any case, Bennet’s designs could be more complicated than that, as The Colorado Independent’s Wendy Norris pointed out Tuesday in a post about the bigger picture.

The Atlantic’s Mark Ambinder writes today on his theory on Sen. Michael Bennet’s maddeningly mute stance on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). It’s a strong-arm tactic to bring labor and business together to negotiate on two causes close to the hearts of progressive activists and entrepreneurs alike: union-organizing and health care reform.

Says Ambinder, referring to a now-edited Coloradoan story that has inexplicably removed a key passage on Bennet’s discussion with Larimer County Democratic activists:

[He] is the guy who’s shaping the debate into a wedge. He’s saying these days that health care reform is possible if and only if labor and business work together. But if there’s a continuing fight over EFCA, business won’t play ball, and the cooperation needed to pass health care fails.

It’s an interesting tactic, if true, made that much more intriguing coming from a largely unknown freshman lawmaker whose Senate predecessors would never be confused with hardcore political players.

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.”

Workers’ rights are a core issue for our democracy, argues progressive icon Noam Chomsky in an interview with Paul Jay of The Real News. Chomsky advocates for a much broader palette of reform than a simple cleanup of the financial sector.

The discussion covers the current economic crisis and its implications for the democratization of the U.S. economy. It’s a fascinating exchange.

Chomsky notes that while the recent bank bailouts have brought a great deal of attention to the disconnect between public investment and private profit, it has become routine for the taxpaying public to foot the bill for important research that eventually creates big corporate profits. To ensure that we all reap the benefits of our investments, it is essential to make institutions accountable to their communities, rather than exclusively dedicated to maximizing shareholder returns.

The first step in democratizing the U.S. economy, according to Chomsky, is promoting unionization by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act, which makes it easier for workers to organize.

“The Employee Free Choice Act is always misrepresented,” Chomsky says. “It’s described as an effort to avoid secret elections. It’s not that. It’s an effort to allow workers to decide whether there should be secret elections, instead of leaving the decisions entirely in the hands of employers.”

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'Card check' ballots to determine union representation. (Photo/Old Sarge, Flcikr)

Glenn Spencer, executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former chief of staff at the U.S. Labor Department under the Bush administration, spoke at the offices of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry and warned of the “most radical rewrite of labor law in 70 years.”

At issue is a measure called the Employee Free Choice Act, which would give workers the ability to choose how to organize a union, either by a secret election ballot or by a majority of the work force signing union cards. Currently, employers are the only ones who get to decide how a union is formed, usually opting for an election process where there is enough time before the vote to hire new employees or implement union busting tactics.

“Congress is actually planning on passing this law, and they will unless the public makes their voices heard to their public officials, specifically in the Senate,” said Spencer, adding that “we’ll probably put at least 10 million into it, maybe more if we have to.”

Trying to pressure congressional members is not a new tactic for the chamber. During the 2008 elections the group spent approximately $100 million running ads against Democratic Senate candidates, including U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, for supporting the EFCA in the past. Because the ads were financed through nonprofit groups, the chamber was not required to disclose information on its contributors.

Another tactic being used to combat the possible passage of the EFCA is changing state law to force secret ballot elections. An organization called the Save Our Secret Ballot coalition, which includes a variety of businesses and local politicians, has been leading the way to initiate such change on a state-to-state basis. Bills have been proposed in the South Carolina Legislature, among others.

The EFCA does not get rid of the secret ballot. Instead it allows the work force to choose whether they want to hold an election to form a union. It is also doubtful that state laws would actually be able to override the federal legislation, which is set to be debated in Congress this year.

“Certainly I think those are good efforts,” said Spencer. “Whether those efforts would in fact stand up to the federal preemption issue I don’t know. Certainly we encourage states to continue passing those bills.”

Although no changes to Colorado law are in the works at this time, Chuck Berry, a former Republican state lawmaker and president of the state commerce association, said his organization would lead the charge against the measure.

“Colorado is indeed the battleground on this issue,” Berry said, noting that it will be important to pressure the U.S. Senate to deny the required 60-vote cloture for the proposal to pass — a number that the Democrats don’t have, despite a current majority of 56 members — in order to kill what he called an “anti-business agenda by organized labor.”

The most recent federal laws specifically regulating union organization are the Taft-Hartley Act and National Labor Relations Act. Both were enacted more than 60 years ago.

Here’s the ad, which will air for “more than a week” in Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota and Arkansas, tailored to Democratic Sens. Salazar, Ben Nelson, Byron Dorgan and Mike Pryor, according to TPM:

Salazar, who has reportedly accepted an offer to be President-elect Barack Obama’s secretary of the interior, is probably not the most effective target for the message, but TPM reports this is just the latest salvo in what will likely be labor’s biggest legislative battle in the upcoming session of Congress.

A spokesman for SEIU, which is the union slammed in the ad and which is waging a high-profile campaign for the EFCA, released this statement in response to the ad:

“This attack against working people from a business-funded front group is a desperate attempt to distract from what really matters. America’s families need change that works to rebuild the middle class with the free choice to join unions for better wages, benefits, and retirement security. That’s why we need the Employee Free Choice Act.”