Jack Kemp, football star, key figure in GOP shift on economics

The title-winning quarterback, who went on to become a New York congressman, presidential candidate, Cabinet secretary, and vice presidential candidate, died at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was diagnosed with cancer in January.

"Jack Kemp's commitment to public service and his passion for politics influenced not only the direction of his party, but his country," President Obama said in a statement. Obama praised Mr. Kemp as "a man who could fiercely advocate his own beliefs and principles while also remembering the lessons he learned years earlier on the football field: that bitter divisiveness between race and class and station only stood in the way of the 'common aim of a team to win.' "

Mr. Kemp gained national prominence with the San Diego Chargers in the early 1960s before leading the Buffalo Bills to the American Football League Championship in 1964 and 1965.

He used his popularity on the football field to win election from a Buffalo-area district to the US House of Representatives, where he served from 1971 to 1989.

As a congressman, Mr. Kemp was one of the few members of the House - along with Democratic Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill - to have national name recognition. With his Kennedy-style hair, boyish good looks, unbounded enthusiasm, and raspy voice, Mr. Kemp seemed a natural to bring a new energy and interest to the Republican Party when he joined the presidential ticket of Senator Robert Dole of Kansas in 1996.

"Jack was an eternal optimist who was always searching for solutions that would help the American people," Dole said yesterday.

Mr. Kemp had been the leading architect of the Kemp-Roth tax bill, first proposed in 1978 with Senator William Roth of Delaware. It sought a 30 percent cut in federal taxes over three years. His 1979 book, "American Renaissance: A Strategy for the 1980s," helped redefine the GOP's economic identity and became a blueprint for what became known as Reaganomics during Ronald Reagan's presidency.

Reagan biographer Lou Cannon said Mr. Kemp, as much as anybody, helped persuade Reagan to embrace an economic policy of supply-side economics, stimulating economic growth through reducing taxes.

The tax bill was defeated in the House, but a similar measure was approved two years later offering a 25 percent cut in taxes. Mr. Kemp also favored a return to the gold standard and took a hard line against the Soviet Union and for the Nicaraguan contras and Israel.

In many ways Mr. Kemp was ahead of his time in Republican circles, calling for the party to embrace all races and ethnicities, and he pushed for the inclusion of blacks, Latinos, and Jews.

Mr. Kemp always thought about how to "add and multiply" the party, said Edwin J. Feulner, a former campaign adviser and president of the Heritage Foundation.

Representative John Lewis, a Democrat of Georgia, called Mr. Kemp "a statesman who, especially in his later years, tried to reach across the aisle to solve some of our nation's problems. He was deeply concerned about the struggles of urban America, especially those of inner-city youth. His voice will be deeply missed."

Viewing himself as a neoconservative, Mr. Kemp fostered activism among younger Republicans, breaking with the moderate old guard of the party that included George H.W. Bush, Dole, and House stalwarts such as Robert Michel. In the process, he became an ideological model for a generation of leaders that included future House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia.

But despite his looks and charisma, he did poorly on the national stage. His economic concepts, which he sold on the stump with the zeal of a fundamentalist preacher, seemed wonkish and failed to convert voters. His campaign style was seen as undisciplined and impatient. Political analysts saw him as unwilling to play politics.

"If I could remove two-thirds of your knowledge and three-fourths of your vocabulary, I could make you into a decent candidate," veteran Republican consultant Edward J. Rollins recalled telling him.

A native of Los Angeles, Jack Kemp was the third of four sons of Paul R. Kemp, who owned a small trucking company, and Frances Pope Kemp, a social worker who spoke fluent Spanish. The Kemps were Republicans and Christian Scientists. (Kemp became a Presbyterian after his marriage and for years considered himself a born-again Christian.)

At the dinner table, Frances Kemp insisted that her sons deal with important issues. "It was," Kemp's younger brother, Dick, told the Times some years ago, "a family where ideas mattered."

Mr. Kemp was a solid high school football player with a strong arm, but his size - 5 feet 10, 150 pounds - kept him from being recruited by major colleges. He went instead to Occidental College in Los Angeles, which years later would briefly be the academic home of Barack Obama. A bright but unmotivated student, he earned a degree in physical education. He also met Joanne Main, one year his junior. They wed and had four children, one of whom, Jeff, was a quarterback for several NFL teams. The Kemps also have 17 grandchildren.

Mr. Kemp was drafted in the 17th round by the NFL's Detroit Lions, but was cut before the season began. Over the next several seasons, he was signed and cut by several NFL and Canadian Football League squads. He began resurrecting his career in 1960 when he signed with the Chargers of the fledgling American Football League.

Within two years, however, he had fallen into disfavor with team management and was picked up by the Buffalo Bills for $500. In upstate New York, he led the Bills to four division titles and two AFL championships in seven years. When he retired, he held three all-time AFL records with 3,055 pass attempts, 1,428 completions, and 21,130 yards gained passing. His No. 15 was retired by the Bills.

In 11 seasons, he sustained a dozen concussions, two broken ankles, and a crushed hand - which Mr. Kemp insisted a doctor permanently set in a passing position so that he could continue to play.

"Pro football gave me a good perspective," he was quoted as saying. "When I entered the political arena, I had already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy."

Mr. Kemp was a cofounder of the league's players association and served as its head from 1965 to 1970. During his tenure, he negotiated a wage-and-benefits package with league owners.

During the early 1960s, he had developed a friendship with Herb Klein, who was an aide to Richard Nixon. Mr. Kemp later worked for Reagan, then California's governor, as a liaison to local and county governments.

So when he retired from football, it was not entirely unexpected that Republican Party leaders - perhaps encouraged by Nixon's White House - would approach him to run for the 39th Congressional District seat that encompassed parts of Buffalo.

"Finding Jack Kemp was like finding the Holy Grail," Al Bellanca, a GOP official, had told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

He would serve in the House for 18 years, most of the time winning reelection handily.

Believing he was the ideological heir to Reagan, Mr. Kemp quit his House seat and in 1988 ran against a sitting vice president, George H.W. Bush, for the GOP's presidential nomination, but his campaign themes failed to catch on, and he quit after a mediocre Super Tuesday showing.

Rollins later wrote that "Jack was a totally unmanageable candidate. He was impossible to discipline and simply wouldn't listen. He loved making speeches and relished the intellectual combat of candidate forums and debates. He had magic with the crowds. But he fought us tooth-and-nail over the rest of [what] a candidate has to do to get elected."

"I call it the quarterback mentality," Rollins wrote. "Quarterbacks think they can always make the big play and resent being controlled by anyone."

Bush surprised Mr. Kemp by offering him a Cabinet post, albeit a relatively minor one as secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Calling himself a "bleeding-heart conservative," Mr. Kemp traveled the country offering a gospel of economic empowerment. Taking over an agency beset by scandal during the Reagan years, Mr. Kemp instituted changes, encouraged urban renewal, and espoused tenant ownership of public housing projects.

But Bush's presidency was not focused on domestic policy, and there was little financial support for Mr. Kemp's ambitious plans, which he said were part of an effort to make the GOP seem less like a party that espoused "small government and big prisons."

His selection by Dole as his running mate was a surprise. The choice was celebrated by party conservatives and also praised by some party moderates because of his reputation as an advocate for broadening the GOP's appeal to minorities and from his proven electoral appeal to blue-collar Democrats.

In the end, however, his presence failed to trigger a measurable defection among Democrats, allowing Bill Clinton to win reelection.

Material from the Associated Press was included in this obituary.