KINDER'S COMMENTARY: MISSOURI IS TARGET STATE FOR BIG LABOR

The fall campaign of 1996 appears to be shaping up as one titanic struggle and potentially the most crucial and defining election in 64 years. What is abundantly clear is that one side -- Big Labor, to be exact -- is pushing an enormous pile of chips toward the middle of the table in one gigantic bet that it can reverse the results of the 1994 elections. And Missouri voters are as much labor's target and focus as we've ever been.

Word from political insiders in both parties goes a long way toward explaining why Missouri finds itself a battleground on the labor-inspired minimum-wage issue. Here it is: A command decision has been made, in the political shop at the White House and at the highest levels of the AFL-CIO, that Missouri is one of a handful of toss-up states that President Clinton must win for re-election. (In this regard it is interesting to note that our record as a bellwether in presidential elections isn't bad, Missouri having gone with the winner in every presidential election in this century save one. In 1956, Adlai Stevenson narrowly won Missouri against a victorious Dwight Eisenhower, who was seeking re-election.)

The result of this command decision has tongues wagging in the state capitol. In an unprecedented push, Big Labor will pour $2 million into Missouri this year. Labor officials are prominent backers of the proposal to hike the minimum wage, although the official front group is a band of left-wing social "activists" calling itself ACORN, which is an acronym for the modest and unpretentious moniker "Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now." ACORN is pushing a ballot initiative for the November ballot to increase the minimum wage from the current $4.25 to $6.25, for an increase of 47 percent. It is likely their efforts will qualify this initiative for the ballot.

Big Labor's big bucks will be a nice complement to fall campaign efforts of the Missouri Democratic Party. The push can also be seen as a payback from Clinton administration politicos to their loyal Missouri servant, Gov. Mel Carnahan, who has worked hand-in-glove with the Clintons on proposals from health care to education and much more besides. A heavy push by labor will be a huge boost to Democratic efforts to beat back House Republicans, whose numbers have surged from 61 up to 75 (just seven short of controlling the chamber) since Clinton and Carnahan took office in 1993.

And, of course, the Missouri targeting fits into Big Labor's recently announced national strategy, in which a lug is being put on every AFL-CIO member in America to finance an unprecedented, $35 million campaign to reverse the results of the 1994 elections and make Dick Gephardt speaker of the House. Think of it as the last stand of the Old Order. A Freedom Tide promising to shrink government, lower taxes and make liberals forever irrelevant crashed onto American shores on Nov. 8, 1994, but powerful forces are resisting this tide and want to go back to their good old days when Foley, Rostenkowski, Gephardt and Co. held unchecked power, just as, for so long, have their counterparts in Missouri: Griffin, Carnahan and Co.

A big question remains to be answered. Will all the key elements of the GOP's Freedom Coalition rise to the challenge? Will small business' foot soldiers and heroic entrepreneurs in the National Federation of Independent Business weigh in with equal fervor, equal commitment? Will law-abiding gun owners be heard from as overwhelmingly as they were heard from a scant two years ago? What about the pro-lifers, so many of whom were seduced by candidate Clinton's promise to make abortions safe, legal and rare, only to watch in horror as he vetoed the partial-birth abortion bill? What about parents alarmed about public schools whose teachers unions and administrators seem far more eager to hand out condoms and enforce political correctness than to guarantee that their students master the basics?

The minimum wage seems a thin reed on which to lean, a mere cynical ploy, its phony promise thoroughly discredited. This writer will deal with it on the merits, thoroughly, in a later column. Meanwhile, the Big Question of the day is whether a self-confident GOP can get its act together in time to meet the formidable challenges now gathering force against it.

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