Kemp on Ticket Could Be Boon, Bane for GOP

The apparent choice of Jack Kemp as a running mate almost certainly will provide Bob Dole’s campaign a boost--at least temporarily, given the former housing secretary’s stature and broad appeal within the GOP, Republican leaders and analysts said Friday.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the choice of Kemp--which was expected to be made official today in Dole’s hometown of Russell, Kan.--”fabulous,” predicting he would be an “enormously effective missionary for lower taxes.”

New Jersey’s Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who at one point was considered a possible candidate herself, focused on another area of potential importance, saying that “Jack Kemp has an appeal to a constituency in the minority community that isn’t normally considered Republican.”

“People generally like the strengths Jack Kemp has,” she said.

The lift Kemp is expected to bring is one Dole needs more than ever after the events of the past week. The candidate appears to have quieted--if not unified--his party’s disputing factions. But while the accomplishment is significant, it has come at considerable cost.

Dole aides had hoped to spend this past week focusing attention on his newly announced economic plan. Instead, the three days that party leaders spent grappling with the emotionally charged abortion issue largely diverted attention from Dole’s proposal for an across-the-board reduction in income tax rates.

As a result, the choice of a running mate now has to carry even greater weight. And that may have encouraged Dole to make a decision that, despite its immediate benefits, could cause longer-term problems--particularly if the notably outspoken Kemp’s pronouncements on the stump don’t jibe with Dole’s thinking.

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“I think the biggest single challenge for Jack is going to be trying to conform to the presidential candidate’s views,” said one senior official in Kemp’s 1988 presidential campaign.

Among the issues on which they differ is one of particular importance in California--immigration. Dole has endorsed measures aimed at combating illegal immigration, such as California’s Proposition 187, that Kemp has opposed on the grounds that they are too punitive, particularly toward children.

A bigger potential problem with Kemp involves his discipline as a candidate. When he announced last year that he would not run for president, he attributed his decision in part to his difficulty in raising money.

But one of his political backers said, “It had more to do with his not having the fire in his belly.”

For now, however, those potential problems remain in the future. At this point, Dole’s aides and Republicans here are concentrating on the anticipated boost from a Kemp selection. In particular, as Whitman noted, they are counting on benefits from Kemp’s reputation as an advocate for broadening the GOP’s appeal to minorities and from his proven electoral appeal to blue-collar Democrats.

Ordinarily, the choice of a running mate--despite the attention it attracts--does not affect the presidential race greatly. Dan Quayle was widely perceived as a handicap for George Bush in the 1988 election, but in the end, polls indicated that his presence on the ticket had little impact.

In this case, however, Dole badly needed something to generate excitement among Republicans and to sound a good opening note for his convention.

Measured in polling points, the Republican objective is to narrow the gap between Dole and President Clinton to single digits by the time the convention ends late next week, according to Paul Manafort, Dole’s convention coordinator. Considering that the presumptive Republican nominee now trails Clinton by 15% to 20% in most surveys, that would amount to a tremendous leap forward.

Even for GOP loyalists, optimism about what can be accomplished in San Diego is tempered with realism. “I think we can get a jump-start out of the convention,” said ClarkeReed, a longtime Mississippi GOP leader. “Though actually what we need is more of a pole vault.”

Before they can start hammering away at Clinton in a bid to win over the swing voters now leaning the president’s way, Dole strategists concede they first must use the convention to nail down the backing of normally Republican voters--particularly moderates.

As part of that appeal to centrist voters, Kemp could particularly help Dole with what his strategists see as a key goal for the convention: separating the nominee from the shadow of the Republican Congress, whose performance during the budget battle with Clinton in 1995 allowed Democrats to tar Republicans with the brush of extremism and sent GOP fortunes plummeting.

“If we can spend the time [in San Diego] correcting the misperceptions about a rigid, intolerant extremist party through the [convention] program, through the speeches, through the issues that are featured, then we’ve done a helluva lot,” said Don Sipple, senior media advisor to the Dole campaign.

Although Kemp is a strong opponent of abortion and is generally quite conservative, he has consistently argued in favor of greater inclusiveness in the party. In the past, he has had particularly good relations with some black leaders--an area of particular weakness for the Republicans.

Dole’s last major effort to convey the impression of a broad and generous-minded party was his attempt to insert in the platform a strongly worded “tolerance” plank on abortion. The repudiation of Dole’s proposal by the platform committee threatened to undercut that thrust. Now, Republican strategists hope that Kemp could help Dole make a new beginning.

Putting Kemp on the ticket may, however, complicate other issues for Dole.

On immigration, for example, some Dole advisors have urged making Clinton’s opposition to Proposition 187 and similar measures a major issue in the campaign--at least in this state. But Kemp’s vocal opposition to Proposition 187 would presumably make that issue difficult for Dole to use.

California Republicans who supported the proposition were among the few strongly negative voices about Kemp on Friday.

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“This is going to offend a lot of Republicans in California,” said Ron Prince, chairman of Save Our State, an immigration reform group that helped propel Prop. 187 to victory. “I would assume it confirms the rumors that Dole has written off California.”

But Kemp’s strong association with cutting taxes--an issue on which he and Dole differed in the past--could help the ticket focus on the key issue on which Dole’s chances for upsetting Clinton may rest: convincing voters that he has a plan to spur economic growth.

“Dole has to build his campaign around his economic message,” said Rich Williamson, a former Ronald Reagan White House aide and campaign strategist and 1992 GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois. “And he has to have the discipline to sustain that message.”

As evidence that Dole possesses the potential to carry off this challenge, Williamson cited the candidate’s willingness to incorporate into his economic proposal the supply-side premise of tax cuts as a prime economic nostrum, even though such theories run counter to Dole’s political and intellectual heritage as a budget-balancer.

But even some of his own advisors conceded that Kemp could not help Dole with what many strategists see as his most serious problem--his evident disdain for the campaign process. Dole’s attitude may be to his credit as a human being, but it results at times in what his own advisors sometimes describe as a detachment from his own candidacy.

One recalled talking to Dole recently about an embarrassing leak from within his own campaign concerning his economic proposal, then still in the drafting stage. “Have you ever seen a campaign that does this to themselves like they do?” Dole remarked.

“What struck me,” said the advisor, “was that he said ‘them’ and ‘they,’ instead of ‘we’ or ‘us.’ ”

* CONVENTION PROFITS

San Diego’s take from the GOP convention will probably be less than expected. D1