U.S. SENATE AND GOVERNOR CANDIDATES OFFER DIFFERENCES

Let's discuss two of the Missouri statewide candidates for the general election on November 3rd. I give credit for most of the following data to the Monday St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

U.S. SENATE: Senator CHRISTOPHER BOND vs. GERI ROTHMAN-SEROT. Kicking off a two-day campaign swing in St. Louis Sunday a.m. Rothman-Serot scrapped her prepared speech "when only two reporters and no crowd appeared for the event on a picture perfect morning."

Rothman-Serot apparently hopes to show voters the 180 degree difference between herself and Bond that I discussed in a recent column.

Rothman-Serot is a member of the St. Louis County Council; she lives in Frontenac. She outlined her list of goals, including the creation of jobs, the environment, reducing crime, revamping the nation's health-care system and abortion rights. Rothman-Serot supports abortion rights.

"When I campaigned years ago I found the issues were different from county to county," she said. "Now the issues are the same from state to state" -- with jobs first.

"I have never seen such a time when we are all feeling the same pain."

Rothman-Serot said she favored accelerated federal spending, and perhaps a new federal public works program, to repair the country's roads, bridges, and sewer systems.

Rothman-Serot attacked Bond's voting record as "a rubber stamp for Bush." She criticized his opposition to the Brady gun-control bill and another bill to aid Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Warren Erdman, Bond's administrative assistant, said Bond had voted against the Brady Bill as part of an omnibus crime bill to which Bond had several objections. Although Bond voted against aid for Agent Orange victims in the late 1980s, he voted for a similar bill in 1991, Erdman said.

The question of whether the challenger and the incumbent will hold public debates remains unanswered. Erdman said that Bond was eager to debate but that Rothman-Serot was stalling.

Last week, Bond sent his campaign staff to meet with Rothman-Serot to discuss debate invitations, but she was "unwilling to accept" several suggested dates, Erdman said. Bond has accepted five invitations to debate in the state during the next few weeks, Erdman said.

Rothman-Serot said she had rejected two proposed dates for debate, one on a day when she had an "unbreakable" commitment and another on Yom Kippur, a Jewish holiday. Rothman-Serot is Jewish. Rothman-Serot accepted an Oct. 21 date for a debate from a Kansas City television station, but Bond declined, saying that the Senate might still be in session.

* * * * *

GOVERNOR: The race pits Lt. Gov. MEL CARNAHAN against Att. Gen. BILL WEBSTER. If they're calling each other "extremists" as the Post says ... they are NOT. They've both been around government for a while and are respected by their peers in both parties.

Unfortunately, their campaigns (as most do) will overstate their own virtues and their opponents negatives.

Carnahan campaigned in the primary on an education tax proposal that would ask voters to approve tax increases for state and local school districts totaling $196 million per year.

Webster opposes the school tax increase and says he will continue to fight in court to end "excessive desegregation payments" paid to school districts in St. Louis and Kansas City. He accused Carnahan of supporting a negotiated settlement "that will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars."

Carnahan says he also opposes the school-desegregation payments, but contends that Webster's combative approach in court has delayed a solution and has cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars that could have gone to public schools.

* * * * *

Future columns --

Lieutenant Governor: State Auditor MARGARET KELLY (Rep.) vs. State Senator ROGER WILSON (Dem.).

Attorney General: State Senator JAY NIXON (Dem.) vs. former State Representative DAVID STEELMAN. (Rep.)

Secretary of State: State Representative JOHN HANCOCK (Rep.) vs. Pettis County Clerk (Sedalia area) JUDITH MORIARTY.

State Treasurer: Democrat BOB HOLDEN vs. Republican GARY MELTON.

* * * * *

There are no short cuts to anyplace worth going.

Beverly Sills

* * * * *

So, what has Ayn Rand got to offer to comfort us in this depressingly sluggish economy? I suspect it's her picture of independent business people who won't let the politicians kick them around. That's a timely tonic in an era when more and more people understand that government policy is responsible for the mess and when they grasp that contender Bill Clinton is offering to cure too much government with yet more government. You don't have to be an economist to understand that when Clinton talks about soaking the rich he means soaking the successful--the kind of people Ayn Rand celebrates. There is a world of difference between President Bush's capital gains cut and enterprise zone proposals and Bill Clinton's punish-the-rich tax increases.

I hate to keep picking on California, but the state has become a grand example of how too much government weakens an economy. Last week a friend of mine tried to rent a truck from a national rental company to move her furniture to her new home in Portland, Ore. She was told that the company was no longer taking one-way rentals out of California because no one was willing to drive them back.

It's not only the riots, the earthquakes, the 11%-plus top income tax rate, the multi-billion-dollar state budget deficit (code words for more tax increases) or even the massive defense cutbacks (Hughes Aircraft announced 9,000 more layoffs in July) that are driving people out of California. It's the hostile attitude of the state and local bureaucracies toward the owners of capital--especially the small business owners--who form the backbone of the state's economy.

As Atlas Shrugged's protagonist, John Galt, showed, capital owners are independent cusses. They are unwilling to suffer silently from policies that attack their wealth. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for the politicians who would tax and regulate them into oblivion, they can pick up their marbles and move to another location--maybe another state, maybe another country, where they still have a chance to build and create. The losers when this happens, of course, are the people without capital, especially unskilled workers in urban areas. These people have no resources to pay for relocating. They stay and swell the unemployment and welfare rolls.

John Rutledge

Economist

* * * * *