Kemp Enters ’88 Race, Urges Strong Defense

Stressing a hard-line approach to defense and foreign policy, New York Rep. Jack Kemp on Monday formally announced his candidacy for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.

In a crowded House hearing room, surrounded by his colleagues and supporters, the former pro football star and one of the prime instigators of President Reagan’s “supply-side” tax cut warned that “the central dilemma of our day is that we lie defenseless against Soviet missiles.”

To meet that threat, he called for rapid deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative, Reagan’s space-based missile defense program, and he vowed to turn the forthcoming campaign into a “national referendum” on the issue.

In dealing with the Soviet Union and its allies, Kemp called on Americans to “unite behind a strategy for victory,” going beyond “containing communism to the ultimate triumph of freedom.” As a start in that direction, he urged support for guerrilla forces battling Communist regimes on three continents.

Beefier and grayer than during his quarterback days with the Buffalo Bills, the 51-year-old legislator still exudes youthful vitality. He has been a top drawing card at Republican gatherings across the nation ever since he rose to prominence in the late 1970s with his advocacy of across-the-board cuts in income tax rates.

Nevertheless, his bid for his party’s nomination, months in the planning, has gotten off to a slow start. Polls show Kemp trailing Vice President George Bush and Senate Republican leader Bob Dole of Kansas by large margins.

Kemp’s strategists blame this in large part on the fact that their candidate is not as well known nationally as either Dole or Bush, a problem that they expect ultimately to solve itself. Meanwhile, Kemp is striving to catch up by relying on a double-barreled strategy, one that was reflected in Monday’s speech.

Aiming at Right Wing

To begin with, he is aiming to whip up the enthusiasm of right-wing GOP activists, whose energies are vital to his organizing efforts, with his tough stance on foreign policy. More importantly in the long run, he is trying to reach urban and blue-collar voters and others outside traditional Republican ranks by presenting himself as a conservative populist who is more eager for change than the GOP front-runners.

Thus, Kemp called for congressional action on free-enterprise-zone legislation to remedy urban blight and “urban homesteading” proposals to help public housing tenants buy the units they live in, measures intended to portray him as challenging the status quo and the Establishment.

He combined warnings of critical perils facing the nation at home and abroad with confident assurances that these dangers can be overcome. “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed,” he asserted.

View of a GOP Future

Linking the GOP’s past links to the cause of civil rights with his own vision of a more broadly based Republican future, Kemp said: “We will take this campaign to company halls and to union halls . . . and, yes, to inner-city families so that we, the party of Lincoln, can once again hold up the dream of liberty and justice.”

But Kemp’s advisers acknowledged that his effort to build a broader populist base while stirring up conservatives with fervid anti-communist rhetoric has some inherent difficulties.

“Populists are patriotic, but they are not eager for war unless the country is attacked,” one Kemp adviser said. “There’s no constituency for coffins.”

Kemp was questioned closely by reporters after his speech about whether he is willing to sacrifice American lives to achieve his objective of victory over communism, as opposed to mere containment.

Aid for Freedom Fighters

“I don’t think it’s going to require American blood,” he said. “It’s going to require American support for freedom fighters” in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Angola and Mozambique.

In another apparent bid for the support of right-wing activists, Kemp made an impassioned attack on abortion, likening the 1973 Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe vs. Wade, which made that practice legal, to the pre-Civil War Dred Scott decision upholding the legality of slavery.

Although Kemp said in response to a question that he favors a constitutional amendment reversing the high court decision, in his address he instead called only for congressional action to “permit the citizens of each state for the first time since 1973 to protect the inalienable right to life for each and every child.”

Too Long a Process

Aides said that Kemp recommended legislation instead of the amendment because he believes that the amendment process would take too long. But Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said legislation to which Kemp apparently referred would not necessarily allow the states to ban abortion and rather was aimed at forcing a court review of the issue.

But, for all his attempts to appeal to right-wingers, as well as his legitimate conservative credentials, some of Kemp’s views still are criticized by the right. Some conservatives bent on cutting federal spending on entitlement programs resent his successful opposition to freezing cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.

And, on another front important to conservatives, the so-called right-to-work issue, Kemp has drawn criticism because of his vote last year for legislation that would outlaw the practice of different companies that have common ownership operating both with and without union contracts. The legislation would require them instead to have union contracts covering all their operations.

In a move timed to benefit from public attention focused on Kemp’s announcement of his candidacy, the National Right to Work Committee last week mailed letters to 5,000 GOP leaders around the country, asking them to urge Kemp to change his mind. Clayton Roberts, a spokesman for the committee, points out that Kemp rival Dole opposes the bill.

Kemp is the third Republican to announce a presidential candidacy, following former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV and former Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. Bush and Dole are expected to announce later this year, and former Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt has told associates that he also intends to run.

REP. JACK FRENCH KEMP

Born: July 13, 1935, Los Angeles.

Parents: The late Paul Robert Kemp Sr., a trucking company owner, and the late Frances Elizabeth Pope Kemp, a social worker.

Education: BA, physical education, Occidental College, 1957.

Military Career: Army Reserve, 1958-62.

Professional Career: Pro football quarterback, San Diego Chargers and Buffalo Bills, 1957-70. Special assistant to California governor, 1967. Special assistant to Republican National Committee chairman, 1969. Elected to U.S. House from Buffalo, N.Y., 1970; last reelected in 1986 with 57% of vote.

Family: Wife, Joanne Main; two daughters, two sons.

Religion: Presbyterian.

Accomplishments: Most valuable player, American Football League, 1965. Co-founder and president, AFL Players Assn., 1965-70. Popularized “supply-side” economics. Engineered 1981 tax cut, centerpiece of Reagan economic policy. Author, “American Renaissance: A Strategy for the 1980s.”

Positions: For returning United States to gold standard. Against balanced-budget constitutional amendment. For cutting deficit through tax-cut-stimulated economic growth. Against trade protection. For tax-free “enterprise zones” to reduce urban blight. Against equal rights amendment. For aid to Nicaraguan contras. Against abortion. For early deployment of “Star Wars” missile defense.

Strengths: Role as GOP intellectual leader on economics. Favorite of conservative activists. Knowledgeable on budget, defense, foreign aid. Legislative alliances with blacks, Latinos. Energetic. Creative. Competitive. Gregarious.

Vulnerabilities: Windy disquisitions on economic arcana. Lingering though much-reduced jock image. Limited sense of humor. Impatient. So-so listener.