Ryan Frazier puts his job on the line with Amendment 47

Comments (0) By Joel Warner Thursday, Oct 16 2008

...continued from page 6

There was only one problem: Frazier and his colleagues wouldn't back down — even when very powerful people demanded that they do so.

"Let's put it this way," Frazier says. "Between the labor interests and certain Denver business executives, it was coming from both sides. Most of it was political in nature: 'Ryan, if you do this, your political future is in question.'"

Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier has fans and foes.

Jess Knox, director of Protect Colorado's Future, is fighting Amendment 47.

More About

There were stern phone calls, tense meetings, point-blank assertions that Frazier's intransigence could upset the delicate balance between Colorado's labor and business interests for a long time to come. But none of that seemed to matter.

"What I found out is, nothing changed my belief," says Frazier. "The choice was pretty clear: to not waiver and move this thing forward."

On October 2, organized labor pulled their four poison pills just hours before the deadline to do so. In return, they were joined by business leaders — including Bill Coors, Jonathan Coors's great-uncle and former Coors Brewing Company president, who had a falling-out with Jonathan's father in the 1990s over equal employment rights — and interests that agreed to donate $3 million to fight Amendment 47.

Now Frazier and his colleagues were on their own.

"He has unified people in a way that seldom happens," Jess Knox says sarcastically. "When you have businesses and labor leaders and elected officials joining against this initiative, that's really good for Colorado and really bad for Ryan Frazier."

Frazier is once again in a cheerful mood, despite the latest dispiriting news.

He's sitting in a back corner of the concert hall at the University of Denver's performing arts complex, calmly preparing for his first major televised debate on Amendment 47 — where he'll face off against Knox, the head of the organization that's been going after him all these months. "I'm feeling good," he says, even though a public-opinion survey just concluded that only 21 percent of those polled supported Amendment 47. "Notice that all those people had was the ballot language. We know from internal polling that if you go with just the legalese, our amendment struggles. But we know that if we're given the ability to connect the dots on right-to-work, our polling goes way up."

Connecting the dots is exactly what he tries to do when the cameras start rolling on the debate. With his smart business suit and charismatic panache, Frazier makes a stark contrast to Knox's rumpled shirt and tousled hair. Turning to the camera, making eye contact with the audience, Frazier quotes from a CNBC study — "and I do believe this debate is on an NBC affiliate" — that right-to-work states perform better economically than others.

When Knox mentions the deal between labor and business leaders last week to demonstrate the wide coalition against Amendment 47, Frazier counters that, "with all due respect," any other time an organization like Knox's used threats to get money and support, "it would be illegal." The councilman quotes from Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor ("I don't know if you know Gompers," he says to Knox): "I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty, to the principles of voluntarism. No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion."

Again and again, Frazier sidesteps his opponent's demand that he reveal who, exactly, is funding the right-to-work campaign.

It's a performance that helps introduce a young, motivated and telegenic politician named Ryan Frazier to television viewers across the state.

But as the face of this issue, Frazier is more likely than Amendment 47's other backers, most of whom are safely ensconced in the private sector, to take the fall if it fails at the polls — or, worse, if it destabilizes labor relations for years to come.

As Denver pollster Floyd Ciruli puts it, "For his personal identity and image and possible moving up in the Republican Party, this could very well be positive. He will certainly be better known than he was. But there is also a risk. To win support at the state level and win bigger offices, you need to be a coalition builder, not just a person who can be easily identified. That may be a challenge."

No matter what happens on November 4, the sun will still come up on November 5, says Frazier. "The birds will still be flying, folks will still be working, and as long as I know I did what I did because I believed it to be right, let the chips fall where they may."