Jack Kemp

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</td></tr><tr style="text-align: center;"><th colspan="2">9th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development</th></tr><tr><th style="border-bottom: none; text-align: center;" colspan="2">In office</th></tr><tr><td style="border-top: none; text-align: center;" colspan="2">February 13, 1989 – January 19, 1993</td></tr><tr><th>Preceded by</th><td>Samuel Pierce</td></tr><tr><th>Succeeded by</th><td>Andrew Cuomo</td></tr><tr><th>Born</th><td>July 13, 1935
Los Angeles, California</td></tr><tr><th>Political party</th><td>Republican</td></tr><tr><th>Profession</th><td>Professional American football player; Politician</td></tr>

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.

1 Football career
2 Political career
3 Post-political life
4 Dislike of soccer
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Football career

Jack Kemp
Date of birth	July 13, 1935
Place of birth	Los Angeles, CA
Position(s)	QB
College	Occidental
NFL Draft	1957 / Round 17
Pro Bowls	AFL All-Star 7 times
Awards	1965 AFL MVP
Honors	Buffalo Bills Wall of Fame
Statistics	Pro Football Reference DatabaseFootball
Team(s)
1957 1960 1961-1962 1963-1969	NFL Pittsburgh Steelers AFL Los Angeles Chargers AFL San Diego Chargers AFL Buffalo Bills

Jack 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 three NFL seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants, 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. 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.

Jack Kemp was an American Football League All-Star six consecutive years and for seven 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.

[edit] Political career

Kemp represented the Buffalo, New York region in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1989. 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 an effort to reform socialized housing, working toward allowing people trapped in government projects to buy their own homes. Likewise, he promoted market-based urban business district reforms, like Enterprise Zones, reducing the massive regulatory burdens against businesses in poor neighborhoods, to allow entrepreneurs to contribute new businesses to their community. These ideas were fought rabidly by welfare proponents, but because of 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. Because Dole was a comparatively liberal Republican, running on his record of supporting government welfare programs, 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.

Afterward, Kemp seemed to withdraw largely from electoral politics, until raising eyebrows ten years later by endorsing Joe Lieberman as an independent challenger for Lieberman's own Senate seat in Connecticut, in the 2006 mid-term election. Lieberman had lost his own re-nomination to challenger Ned Lamont, because of Lieberman's support of the War in Iraq, which had become unpopular in Liberal Democrat-dominated New England. The Harvard Political Review recently interviewed Kemp about his current political views, particularly his focus on tax reform and anti-poverty measures.

[edit] Post-political life

Although mentioned as a possible 2000 presidential candidate, Kemp did not run, instead endorsing eventual winner Governor of Texas George W. Bush.

Jack Kemp also started the free market advocacy group Empower America, which later merged with Citizens for a Sound Economy to form FreedomWorks, but resigned as Co-Chairman of FreedomWorks 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.

[edit] Dislike of soccer

Jack Kemp has been a joking opponent of soccer, the world's most popular sport. 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, 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.

Jack Kemp has since 'changed' his position on soccer and endorsed it as a sport, although he says it is still a "boring game".

[edit] See also

List of American Football League players

[edit] References

Clinton, Bill (2005). My Life. Vintage. ISBN 1-4000-3003-X.
Foer, Franklin (2004). How Soccer Explains the World. Harper.

[edit] External links

Pro-Football-Reference.com - career statistics
Football Cards of Jack Kemp

Preceded by: Richard D. McCarthy	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 39th congressional district 1971–1973	Succeeded by: James F. Hastings
Preceded by: James F. Hastings	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 38th congressional district 1973–1983	Succeeded by: District 38 eliminated as a result of the 1980 Census
Preceded by: Donald J. Mitchell	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 31st congressional district 1983–1989	Succeeded by: L. William Paxon
Preceded by: Samuel R. Pierce	United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development 1989 – 1993	Succeeded by: Henry Cisneros
Preceded by: Dan Quayle	Republican Party Vice Presidential candidate 1996 (lost)	Succeeded by: Dick Cheney

Preceded by: Gino Cappelletti	American Football League MVP 1965 with Paul Lowe	Succeeded by: Jim Nance
New Title New team created	San Diego Chargers Starting Quarterback 1960–1962	Succeeded by: John Hadl

United States Republican Party Vice Presidential Nominees
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