KINDER'S COMMENTARY: WAIT A MINUTE! SCORE IS STILL TOO HIGH

Well, in today's column, we're really going to get down in the mud and dish out the dirt. On me.

It isn't every day that a major Missouri print publication lists all members of the General Assembly and rates them according to their votes. Such a day occurred this week with the current issue of The Riverfront Times, an alternative weekly in St. Louis. This spirited and irreverent weekly is noted chiefly for sprightly writing on the St. Louis music scene, especially on rock and jazz, for its annual readers' restaurant surveys and not least for the raunchy personal and other ads -- "men seeking men", "women seeking women" -- lurking in its seedy back pages.

Did I mention left-wing politics? The Riverfront Times is so relentlessly left/liberal that by comparison it makes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, for decades one of America's most consistently liberal dailies, resemble the late, lamented Globe-Democrat. In keeping with what I take is a semiannual rite, this week The Riverfront Times published its "Progressive Index," which is a rating of all 197 members of the Missouri General Assembly.

In the judgment of The Riverfront Times, I fared miserably: The most conservative senator scored 18 out of a perfect 100, while I tied for a second-lowest 21 with two of my Republican colleagues, one of whom is Sen. Bill Kenney, the former all-pro quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs and the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor.

All this, while the only avowedly gay member of the General Assembly, Rep. Tim Van Zandt, D-Independence, scored 100, and my archliberal senate colleagues, Democrats J.B. "Jet" Banks and William "Lacey" Clay Jr. scored 93 and 86, respectively.

Nearly alone among my colleagues, and for the second time in a month, I was singled out for special treatment by Riverfront Times writer Melinda Roth:

"We'd also like to toss some darts, particularly at Sen. Peter Kinder (R-Cape Girardeau), who not only scored a conservative 21" -- How did I get that high? -- "on this year's index but was responsible for some of the worst pieces of legislation, having sponsored the English-only bill, the same-sex marriage bill and the environmental-audit bill. In addition, Kinder sponsored a bill that would have tested all university faculty for English fluency, another would have allowed certain retired officials to carry concealed weapons and another that would have required the Missouri Department of Natural Resources to perform a risk/benefit analysis with any rule it promulgated."

Gee. And they didn't even mention my anti-outcome-based education efforts.

Which issues and whose agendas make up the list of votes that determines this index? Author Roth explains: "We first identified key votes in the '95 and '96 ... sessions with the help of ... public-interest organizations, including Pro-Vote, the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, the Missouri Association for Social Welfare, Missouri Citizen Action, the Privacy Rights Education Project, the Sierra Club, the United Auto Workers, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union ... . "

What this litany reveals is unmistakable. It's a blue-ribbon list of left-wing outfits. Without exception, they are at war with my pro-small business agenda favoring lower taxes, smaller government, less regulation, traditional values, the right to life and sensible environmental regulations.

The Riverfront Times has done me a great honor. Still, an apology to my constituents: In the future, I'll be working hard to get that score of 21 reduced still further.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.