KINDER GOP CANDIDATE IN SENATE'S 27TH DISTRICT; REDUCTION OF BIG GOVERNMENT PLEDGED

In a speech Sunday announcing his candidacy for the Missouri Senate, Peter Kinder of Cape Girardeau pledged to wage an aggressive campaign against big government.

Kinder, the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian newspaper, made his announcement to a crowd of about 200 supporters gathered at Cape Girardeau's Holiday Inn.

Kinder, a Republican, said that if elected he will attempt to shrink government and its bureaucracies.

"I believe in freedom," Kinder said. "And I mean it when I say I will go to Jefferson City looking for taxes to cut, regulators to eliminate, services to privatize and bureaucrats to put on the unemployment line."

Kinder urged reform in education, the legal system, welfare and health care. Today he will announce his candidacy with a six-stop tour in each county in the new 27th Senatorial District

Kinder said Missouri voters' overwhelming rejection last fall of a tax-increase package for education indicates a call for education reform.

"What the voters are saying is, `No more money for business as usual; no more money until last time's promises are kept; no more doing things as we've gotten used to doing them,'" he said.

"This is a reform message, and as usual the people and most teachers are ahead of the politicians. We need to listen to that message and heed it."

Kinder said he would work for parental choice in public schools and to trim "an expensive and bloated bureaucracy" and abolish the U.S. Department of Education, which "wastes $19.8 billion we could better spend at the local level."

He also criticized federal judges whose desegregation mandates have depleted education funds for rural school districts.

"It's time we stopped blaming teachers for poor test scores and stopped dumping on them every social problem from single motherhood to drug abuse to teenage pregnancy," Kinder said. "We need to free teachers up to do what they do best teach. And we need to roll up our sleeves and work on these social problems ourselves."

Kinder said he would work to reform the legal system to decrease litigation and its related costs.

"We have erected a legal system that is too often of the lawyers, by the lawyers, and for the lawyers," he said. "This is a competitiveness issue for American business, and it's much too important for us to let up on this reform issue."

Kinder said he supports government assistance for the disabled and the "truly needy," but urged welfare reform.

"For so many families, welfare has made big government a surrogate father, wrecking the family unit that is the basis of a free society," he said. "Welfare is a subtle destroyer of the human spirit that, far from helping recipients, eventually ruins them and their communities."

Kinder urged reform that would allow welfare recipients to take a job at an entry-level wage without losing Medicaid benefits. "We have to eliminate that disincentive to work," he said.

Kinder said that the answers to the "crisis in health care" won't be found by turning health care over to the federal government. He said he supports private, "market-based" solutions to health-care needs.

He said his platform will consist of less government and greater opportunity for individuals and businesses. Kinder praised Republican reforms in the past decade under the leadership of former president Ronald Reagan.

"We became the new American mainstream the party of opportunity and in the bargain we set loose a freedom tide running worldwide that has yet to ebb," he said.

"Our banner, if you will, was this new vision of what I like to call an opportunity society; a rising tide of optimism and opportunity capable of lifting every boat in the harbor. This is my platform. This is my banner."

Kinder also challenged whichever candidate wins the Democratic nomination "to debate me this fall in every county in the new district."

Kinder is the only Republican who has filed for the seat.

Kinder is a 37-year-old Cape Girardeau native and a sixth-generation Missourian. He was introduced Sunday by U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson. Kinder was Emerson's campaign manager in 1980, when he defeated six-term Democrat Bill Burlison.

Kinder served as Emerson's assistant until early 1982, and from 1983-87 he served as staff attorney and real estate representative for Drury Industries Inc. In 1987, he became associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian.