Bush Expected to Name Kemp HUD Secretary

President-elect George Bush has chosen former Republican rival Jack Kemp to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, sources close to Kemp and the Bush transition team said Thursday.

The move would add a colorful and energetic conservative ideologist to the list of Cabinet nominees that so far has been dominated by moderate, pragmatic and low-key senior Washington operatives.

Bush met Wednesday night with Kemp to discuss the job, then spoke with him again Thursday after the New York congressman, who did not run for reelection because he sought the GOP presidential nomination, had talked with family members and decided to accept the post, the sources said. The decision could be announced as early as today.

Choice for Transportation Post

In addition, the anticipated choice of Chicago-area mass transit chief Samuel K. Skinner as secretary of transportation could be announced today, sources said.

Kemp, according to sources close to him, expects to use the HUD post, virtually moribund in the last eight years, as a platform to push a series of his innovative but controversial ideas for revitalizing the nation’s cities.

As Bush worked to meet a self-imposed Christmas deadline to fill eight empty Cabinet slots, he also held what he later described as a “very good” meeting with Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, the president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, who appears to be the front-runner to head the Department of Health and Human Services. He would be the first black appointee to Bush’s Cabinet, but at least one source said a decision on that post would not be likely until next week.

Sullivan, 55, is a longtime friend of Bush’s wife, Barbara, who sits on the Morehouse Board of Trustees. He and his wife traveled to Africa with George and Barbara Bush in 1982.

Sullivan is also supported by some notable conservative leaders, such as Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich, but has encountered opposition from some anti-abortion activists. “He has too many exceptions in his position on abortion” and has not opposed medical research that uses tissue from aborted fetuses, said one anti-abortion leader.

Won’t Mount Opposition

“But we’re not mounting any major campaign,” the activist said. “It looks like he’s been tagged, and we don’t want to fight a battle that isn’t winnable.”

As for Kemp, while he and Bush have had a testy relationship in the past, Bush aides hope Kemp will bring considerable energy to the Cabinet. In addition, they noted, having Kemp inside the Administration will reduce the political danger that he could become a rallying point for conservative opposition to Bush’s policies. Kemp has been more vigorous than Bush in his support for several issues of particular interest to conservative activists, including President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars.”

At HUD, Kemp would be likely to push a plan that would allow the government to sell public housing units to tenants, a step that, he argues, would reduce costs to the government while providing the poor with a “middle-class” stake in the community. He also long has advocated urban “enterprise zones,” locations in areas of high unemployment where lower taxes and relaxed regulations would encourage business development.

Bush is also close to completing his top White House staff. Robert Teeter, Bush’s campaign pollster and adviser, talked Thursday night with Bush and with John H. Sununu, whom Bush has tapped to be his White House staff chief, amid indications that Teeter was close to deciding whether to sign on as deputy chief of staff with broad power over domestic policy formulation.

By comparison to past administrations, Bush has moved rapidly so far in naming six Cabinet members. But five of the people named so far--James A. Baker III to head the State Department, Nicholas F. Brady to Treasury, Dick Thornburgh to Justice, Clayton K. Yeutter to Agriculture, and Lauro A. Cavazos to Education--served in the Reagan Cabinet. The sixth, Robert A. Mosbacher, to Commerce, is a longtime Bush friend.

Now, in the midst of the more time-consuming process of seeking “new faces” for the rest of his top Administration jobs, Bush is juggling names and coping with lengthy FBI background checks as he seeks the people he wants while placating powerful constituencies and meeting his pledges to appoint women and members of minority groups.

Bush still seems likely to pick former Texas Sen. John Tower to be secretary of defense. Bush’s counsel C. Boyden Gray met with the President-elect Thursday to review the results of Tower’s FBI background check, which sources said turned up no disqualifying problems.

Including the probable appointments of Kemp, Skinner and Sullivan, that would fill 10 of the 14 Cabinet posts. Bush brought Skinner to Washington Thursday, anticipating that he would be named that day. But Bush postponed the announcement, reportedly out of pique at newspaper leaks about his decisions.

For the remaining four posts--Interior, Labor, Veterans Affairs and Energy--Bush and his aides are trying to balance the competing desires of numerous groups.

For example, Western-state Republican senators have been actively pushing Warren A. Morton, the former Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives, and John J. Rhodes of Arizona, the former Republican leader of the U.S. House, as candidates for secretary of the Interior. But “neither has really taken off as a consensus candidate” and environmental groups are unenthusiastic about both, according to a source.

Bush might decide to break with tradition and look outside the West for a candidate more acceptable to the environmental community, perhaps former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander. Or, he could choose one of the two Westerners and console the environmentalists by naming a person more acceptable to them to head the Environmental Protection Agency, the source noted.

Bush aides have been hoping to find a woman for labor secretary, and Bush aides say that Patricia Diaz Dennis, a former member of the National Labor Relations Board who sits on the Federal Communications Commission, has emerged as a likely candidate.

Veterans Affairs

For Veterans Affairs, the newest Cabinet post, Everett Alvarez Jr., who was the longest-held American POW in Vietnam and a former deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration, has long been considered a leading candidate. But Bush also is considering retired Army Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr., who now runs the Federal Emergency Management Agency, transition sources said. Alvarez would be the Cabinet’s second Latino member. Becton is black.