WHO IS THIS SPECIAL-INTEREST GROUP MEL CANAHAN HAS INVITED INTO THE SENATE RACE?

"Politics ain't beanbag," goes the old saying. Just so. You've never read here a weepy lament about negative campaigning. Compare-and-contrast ads, based on facts and revealing differing issue stands, offer much that is useful to voters, especially much that the national news media won't tell.

Then there is the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. This direct-mail group is truly disgraceful, a breed apart -- beyond the pale. They're so bad that a Democratic Congress investigated and passed corrective legislation called the Deceptive Mailings Prevention Act to correct the organization's abuses.

We haven't seen the TV ads here. But in the pivotal St. Louis television market, where they've been running heavily for Gov. Mel Carnahan, they must be brutal. They are paid for by the Missouri Democratic Party, currently run by Puxico native, longtime Carnahan chief of staff and political operative Roy Temple, whom I first met 14 years ago when he worked for congressional candidate Wayne Cryts. The heavy TV ad buy is a contract hit by the above-named committee and basically accuses U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft of trying to dismantle Social Security and Medicare.

In March 1988, the respected, independent Washington Monthly rated the NCPSSM "the worst interest group in Washington" and said this of the group:

"The committee does such a good job of imitating the government's letters that the elderly show up at local Social Security offices to pay what the letter seems to demand in order to keep benefits coming." The late Democratic Florida senator and governor, Lawton Chiles, added that seniors who could least afford it had each given hundreds of dollars to this committee. New York Democratic U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a respected Social Security expert, also denounced the NCP-SSM.

In 1989, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that the Social Security Administration said the committee was among eight involved in misleading or deceptive mailings to Social Security recipients. Commissioner Dorcas Hardy said the group's fund-raising approach was "totally irresponsible."

Last year Democratic U.S. Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana said to the NCPSSM crowd:

"I have lost all respect for your committee. ... When an organization ... uses this massive a fund-raising effort, that is unfortunate. The Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, I think, should now be called the Committee to Preserve Itself. ... You ... are scaring the bejesus out of seniors."

In 1990, here's former Democratic U.S. Sen. David Pryor of Arkansas, backing the Deceptive Mailings Prevention Act:

"We have seen a growing number of organizations ... that have adopted the use of government look-alike mailings as a marketing technique. ... A disproportionate amount of this deceptive mail seems to be targeted at the elderly with the apparent aim of instilling fear among Social Security ... and Medicare recipients. Oftentimes these are financially hard-pressed senior citizens who are urged to make a contribution ... by charlatans who are preying on a very, very vulnerable sector of our society."

Are we known by the company we keep?

Sure. Just look at who it is Mel Carnahan has brought into Missouri to do his hatchet jobs. Shame, governor. Shame.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.