POLITICAL AD AGAINST BILL KENNEY HAD OUTRIGHT FALSEHOODS

October has arrived, and with it the charges and countercharges characteristic of the election season. Take Missouri's spirited race for lieutenant governor. The Republican nominee is Sen. Bill Kenney of Lee's Summit, who is challenging Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson, the Democratic incumbent.

Wilson represented Boone County in the Senate for 13 years. As the hometown senator from the flagship campus of the University of Missouri, Wilson tended to favor higher spending and the higher taxes that go with it. Kenney's first television ad took aim at the Wilson record, tagging the incumbent as a "tax-and-spend liberal" who voted 228 times for tax and fee increases.

Wilson responded in a TV ad that makes no attempt to refute the Kenney charges. Rather, the Wilson ad slammed Kenney, a former Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, for being a "questionable businessman" because he worked for a brokerage firm that supposedly violated securities laws in 10 states, including Missouri, through the sale of tax shelters. The Wilson ad refers to Wall Street West, which hired Kenney from 1978 to 1981 in his first job out of college. Kenney says that, working intermittently while struggling to make it in the NFL, he sold stocks and never sold tax shelters. Kenney joined the firm in November 1978 after being chosen next to last in the National Football League's draft, when he returned to Greeley, Colo., after being cut by the Washington Redskins. He told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that "I sold some penny stocks. I looked at it as a part-time job. I never made much money at it."

Wilson's ad says that Wall Street West "was caught operating illegally." According to The Wall Street Journal of Jan. 18, 1984, however, the Securities and Exchange Commission investigated and entirely cleared the firm of any wrongdoing, dismissing the case initiated by its investigators. For his part, Kenney says his securities license is spotless, and Wilson doesn't dispute this.

Most revealing of all is the statement by Marc Farinella, Wilson's political ad consultant. The Wilson ad, Farinella told the Post-Dispatch, doesn't allege that Kenney "personally was involved in some fraudulent scheme. We're saying that he worked for an unscrupulous company that was closed down all over the place."

Oh.

This Wilson ad breaks new ground in the nasty business of tarring with a broad brush. No wrongdoing is alleged against Sen. Kenney, but rather that 15 to 18 years ago, in his first job out of college, a 20-something Bill Kenney once worked part-time, as a beginning salesman for a company that later became the subject of an SEC investigation that exonerated the firm. Lt. Gov. Wilson should be ashamed of himself. Certainly he has no reason to be proud of having leveled such a questionable charge. This is flimsy stuff indeed on which to base a campaign for the second highest office in state government.