Jack Kemp, a star football quarterback who became a congressman, US cabinet secretary and Republican vicepresidential nominee, died on Saturday at age 73.
Kemp died of cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, the New York Timessaid, quoting his son, Jimmy Kemp.
He served 18 years as a congressman from Buffalo, New York, after starring with the Buffalo Bills of the old American Football League. In the House of Representatives, he championed tax cuts, free trade, economic growth and a return to the gold standard.
Kemp ran unsuccessfully for his party’s presidential nomination in 1988 and was Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole’s running mate in the 1996 election.
Kemp also served as secretary of housing and urban development under President George HW Bush.
A hard-nosed competitor in his quarterback days with the Bills and San Diego Chargers in the 1960s, he could be a dogged ideologue when he was a congressman in the 1970s and 80s.
Kemp was something of a surprise choice when Dole, a Kansas senator, tapped him to be his running mate on the 1996 ticket. The two were not close and had clashed often on policy. Dole was a life-long budget-balancing devotee opposed to unfinanced tax cuts. Kemp saw tax-cutting as the priority goal indispensable to growth.
But Dole shifted his stance to make the promise of a 15 per cent tax cut the heart of his losing campaign against former president Bill Clinton.
As housing secretary from 1989-1993, Kemp was an early promoter of enterprise zones in urban areas and establishing inner-city economic resurgence among low-income families. He said his affinity for minority groups was a product of an athlete’s life.
Kemp helped found the Empower America advocacy group that promoted free-market ideas. After Dole lost the 1996 election, Kemp served as co-director there and wrote and lectured. – (Reuters)