JACK KEMP

'Jack French Kemp Jr.' (born July 13, 1935), is an American politician and former professional American football player. He was the Republican candidate for the vice presidency in the 1996 presidential election.
Kemp was born, raised and educated in Los Angeles, California. He is a graduate of Occidental College, where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity.

Contents

Football career

Political career

Post-political life

Views on soccer

See also

References

External links

Football career

Kemp began his professional football career in 1957 when he was selected by the Detroit Lions in the 17th round of the NFL Draft. After one NFL season with the Pittsburgh Steelers and being under contract (taxi squad) to the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers (as well as playing one game for the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League, which made him ineligible for the NFL in 1959), Kemp signed as a free agent with the Los Angeles Chargers of the AFL. Kemp won two American Football League Western Division championships with the Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers before being picked up by the Buffalo Bills.
It was at this time that Kemp received a draft notice for service in the Vietnam War. He received a waiver because of a stated "knee problem". He led Buffalo to three straight Eastern Division titles and two American Football League championships, in 1964 and 1965, throwing to receivers Elbert Dubenion and Ernie Warlick. Kemp was the first 3,000 yard passer in the American Football League (1960, 14-game schedule) and the league's Most Valuable Player in 1965. He had the most career passes attempted, most completions and most yards gained passing in the history of the American Football League.
Kemp was an American Football League All-Star seven consecutive years and for eight of the league's ten years, and the only AFL quarterback to be a starter all ten years. Kemp co-founded the American Football League Players Association with Tom Addison of the Boston Patriots, and was elected its president five times. He was one of only twenty players who were in the American Football League for its entire ten-year existence. He advocated recognition of the league, and in its last year, 1969, lobbied Pete Rozelle to have AFL teams wear an AFL patch to honor it.

Political career

Kemp represented the Buffalo, New York region in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1989. Kemp was considered a front runner for the vice presidency at the 1980 Republican National Convention, and received 43 votes conservatives who were apposed to George Bush. Kemp, along with Republican congressman David Stockman of Michigan, wrote a memorandum to president-elect Ronald Reagan in 1980 that outlined an economic plan that would become the foundation for Reaganomics. In 1988 he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican Presidential nomination, and subsequently served as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1989 to 1993 under President George H. W. Bush.
As secretary of HUD, Kemp spearheaded the Homeownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere (HOPE) program, an effort to reform socialized housing, by allowing residents of government housing projects to buy their own unit. Likewise, with his Urban Enterprise Zone program, he promoted market-based urban business district reforms by offering tax breaks and reducing the regulatory burdens for businesses in poor neighborhoods. These ideas were fought by welfare proponents, but their immense success compared to public housing and other attempts to control communities through heavy government, they have become the dominant stances of housing and urban development today, giving rise to modern Urban Renewal systems.
Kemp was the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in 1996, running alongside Senator Bob Dole. Kemp was seen as a means to attract conservative and libertarian-minded voters like those of tough nomination-challengers Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan. As is usually the case with vice presidential nominees, this did not have as much impact as hoped.

Post-political life

Although mentioned as a possible 2000 presidential candidate, Kemp did not run, instead endorsing eventual winner George W. Bush.
Kemp also started the free market advocacy group Empower America, which later merged with Citizens for a Sound Economy to form Freedom Works, but resigned as Co-Chairman of Freedom Works in March 2005 after he was questioned by the FBI about his ties to Samir Vincent, a Northern Virginia oil trader implicated in the U.N. Oil-for-food scandal who pled guilty to four criminal charges stemming from the scandal, including illegally acting as an unregistered lobbyist of the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. [1]
His legacy includes the Kemp-Roth Tax Cut of the 1980s, also known as the first of the two "Reagan tax cuts." He also served at a Distinguished Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute where he wrote regularly on economic and regulatory issues.
Kemp is the founder and chairman of Kemp Partners, a strategic consulting firm helping clients achieve both business and public policy goals. He also serves on the board of directors at InPhonic (a position he has held since 2002), the Oracle Corporation, IDT, and the Hawk Corporation.
In 2006 Kemp, along with another unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate, John Edwards, co-chaired the Council on Foreign Relations task force on Russia, producing a document called .

Views on soccer

Kemp has been a joking opponent of soccer. In 1986 on the House floor, Kemp famously proclaimed "I think it is important for all those young out there — who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands — [that] a distinction should be made that football is democratic capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport." Kemp says he based his speech on one of George Carlin's classic comedy routines on the differences between baseball and football.
Kemp has since 'changed' his position on soccer and endorsed it as a sport, although he says it is still a "boring game".

See also

★ List of American Football League players

References

★ Clinton, Bill (2005). ''My Life''. Vintage. ISBN 1-4000-3003-X.

★ Foer, Franklin (2004). ''How Soccer Explains the World''. Harper.

★ Lodge, George (2000). "The Reagan Plan". Harvard Business School 9-381-173.

External links

★ Bubble gum cards
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