Democrats called Sen. Norm Coleman a "liar" for repeating claims made in commercials by an anti-labor business group called the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, and they filed a complaint with the Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings, charging that the ads are "spreading false statements about the Employee Free Choice Act."

But the chilly reception for the pair of ads doesn’t seem to have registered for the Coalition, which has begun running them in Maine in support of another Republican, Sen. Susan Collins. The ads, featuring the character Johnny Sack from "The Sopranos" TV show, liken union organizers to the mafia and repeat — as Coleman does — that the Employee Free Choice Act would eliminate secret-ballot voting in union elections (it wouldn’t, as the House Committee on Education and Labor, among many others, attests).

But the issue, as Noah Kunin of The UpTake points out, isn’t merely about "deceptive" advertising, as WCCO put it, or the unkind characterization of union leaders as mob thugs. It’s about "an epic proxy battle between corporations and unions" over how workers can and cannot organize. Watch Kunin’s latest: