GET BRACED FOR U.S. SENATE MATCHUP

The election results weren't fully digested when Gov. Mel Carnahan announced, less than 24 hours after the polls closed, that he would challenge Missouri's junior U.S. senator, John Ashcroft, in 2000. The stage is set for a classic matchup without parallel in the modern history of the state, maybe ever.

Both candidates can claim two-term governor status. Both have won huge victories. And both have cadres of devoted supporters statewide. On the Republican side is Ashcroft, a solid conservative whose last gubernatorial victory earned him the largest winning percentage of any governor since the Civil War.

For the Democrats it will be Carnahan, the incumbent chief executive. Among issues for Missourians to consider will be taxes, fiscal management and the volatile politics of abortion. When John Ashcroft left office in 1993, Missouri ranked 49th in taxes among the states. After five years of Carnahan, Missouri had vaulted to 16th in this dubious category and claimed the distinction of the fastest growing state and local tax burden in the nation. Ashcroft is pro-life, while Carnahan is the most aggressively pro-abortion governor in Missouri history. Carnahan vetoed a bill, passed overwhelmingly by a Democratic-majority Legislature, which would have banned the gruesome form of infanticide known as partial-birth abortion.

Carnahan is a loyal servant of his largest contributors: the personal-injury lawyers of the trial bar, whose business is the redistribution of wealth someone else has earned. Ashcroft has cast his lot with America's producers and with our job-creating entrepreneurial class. Bring on the confrontation. It should be a doozy.