Colorado

In Colorado, there's a multi-initiative war between business and labor interests. Each side is sponsoring multiple measures. But there are talks underway, with some participation by Gov. Bill Ritter, aimed at avoiding a full war in November. The Denver Business Journal has details. Labor has agreed to drop its initiatives -- which are aimed at business prerogatives -- if business leaders will help the unions defeat Measure 47, an initiative to make Colorado a "right-to-work," or open shop, state.

ADDED, 9/21: More details on the talks from the Rocky Mountain News, which even has some documents on the deal-making.

I'm back in Denver today and tomorrow, to do a few reporting errands. (Word to the wise: don't be like your blogger, a Socal boy who is constitutionally incapable of checking reports, and pack a jacket when you visit the Mile High City. It's darn cold here). I'm also touching base with a variety of initiative sponsors here. In a lighter-than-expected year for ballot measures nationwide (with measures failing to make the ballot or being pulled in Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, etc.), Colorado is this year's ballot champion. Nineteen -- that's right, 19 -- measures will be on the November state ballot.

But as I talk to folks on both sides of these campaigns, I feel like I'm entering a time machine -- a time machine that takes me back to 2005 California. There, we saw Gov. Schwarzenegger and his business backers qualify a number of initiatives to the ballot. Labor then countered with a fierce "no" campaign and a few counter-measures of its own. Virtually the same thing has happened in Colorado this year, the one key difference being that Gov. Bill Ritter counseled both sides against going to war. There hasn't been much public polling. Private polling that I'm seeing shows some initiatives doing better than others, but all with serious vulnerabilities. It's quite likely that history will repeat itself here and voters will shoot down both the business initiatives and the labor counter-measures. And no one will emerge a winner after a big, multi-front, expensive campaign -- well, no one except the political consultants.

Backers of Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action initiative on Friday abandoned their lawsuit to try to get the measure on the ballot. It had appeared to have enough to qualify, but was kicked off the ballot because of an unusually high rate of invalid signatures. The supporters of the measure were going back through signatures in Maricopa County, but ran out of time to go through all of them, in part because the county was providing them only two computers to do the work. They say they'll try again in 2010.

I'd be surprised if they can get the money. Connerly and his supporters have proven incapable of getting the basics of qualifying initiatives right. He had originally planned to have a similar initiative on the ballot in five states. But he has failed in three states, and his initiative in Colorado is in trouble. The only state he's made the ballot? Nebraska.

The above ad is running in Colorado. It attacks the well-known Amendment 47 (the Right to Work measure) and two other ballot initiatives supported by business and opposed by labor. Denver's ABC station does a fact-check of the ad here.

The ad is interesting for students of direct democracy because it criticizes the measures not for their content but for how signatures were gathered. For those who know the blockbuster democracy business, the most interesting part is the claim that people with criminal records  helped gather signatures. No kidding!

Opponents of a Colorado ballot initiative to raise oil and gas taxes to fund college scholarships are accusing a state body, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, of using public funds to support the measure. The commission denies it.

Denver Post columnist Al Lewis, looking at a right-to-work initiative on the November ballot in Colorado, asks where the victims are of union abuses. It's an interesting question, given the low rates of unionization in the private sector in his state and nationwide. But let me be the first to predict that Lewis will be deluged from complaints from public sector workers -- particularly teachers -- angry about being forced to give part of their paycheck to powerful organizations who practice politics they don't agree with.

That's what the Denver Post fears will happen if Colorado voters adopt the so-called "personhood" ballot initiative that would give the legal rights of a human being to any fertilized egg.

The union opponents of the November ballot initiative to make Colorado a "right to work' state went to court today to try to throw the initiative. The court case alleges "massive" signature fraud, with so many duplicates and false signatures that the measure could not have properly qualified for the ballot. Such suits are common and usually get thrown out. But the political climate in Colorado is so hostile to direct democracy and signature gathering now that if I were a backer of the "right to work" measure, I'd be worried.

Get used to it. Most of the country's blockbuster democracy news is coming from the Centennial State. A bit of news from California and elsewhere appears at the bottom of this post.

 COLORADO PEACE: It appears that there's been a cooling on one front of the all-out initiative war in Colorado. The trial lawyers and the sponsor of an initiative to limit contigency fees are putting their swords away. The contigency fee initiative -- and 9 counter initiatives filed by the lawyers -- have been dropped. Hat tip: Point of Law.  according to the Point of Law legal blog.

DENVER ET COMMISSION GETS A HEARING: Its sponsor says there's evidence that aliens -- and he doesn't mean Mexicans, Mr. Tancredo -- are already among us. At the hearing, concern is expressed about the commission's cost -- $75,000 -- and how easy it is to qualify the measure (only 3,900 signatures) and of course, about what late night comics might say. Learn more about the Extra campaign as its new web site.

National unions have put more than $1 million into Colorado, mostly to fight the right-to-work initiative that recently qualified for the ballot. SEIU, the nation's largest union, has donated more than $600, and things are just getting started. This Denver Post story predicts that the right-to-work initiative will cost more than $25 million, and the ballot will have more than a half-dozen measures. Look for Colorado, not Ohio, to be the biggest swing state this fall, as presidential contenders battle over it, and the forces of business and labor from across the country attempt to bloody each other with initiatives here.