A GOP Feat : Ex-HUD Secretary Kemp Gets Warm South-Central Greeting

Jack Kemp came to the Challengers Boys and Girls Club on Wednesday and pulled off a feat that surely would have eluded nearly any other Republican politician--assembling an enthusiastic and sympathetic crowd in the overwhelmingly African American and Latino community of South-Central Los Angeles.

The Republican vice presidential candidate held a two-hour round-table discussion with a dozen handpicked community leaders and 300 invited guests. Even the registered Democrats in the audience had kind words for the former secretary of Housing and Urban Development, long known as an advocate for inner-city constituencies.

“I came with mixed feelings today,” Leon Ralph, of Opportunities Industrialization Center, a local job training and placement center that supports minority businessmen, told Kemp. “I am committed to the incumbent president, Bill Clinton, but I came because you are a friend of ours.”

The comment reflected Kemp’s dilemma: Just how many votes can he pull for Dole in communities like South-Central, where Democrats make up about 75% of registered voters? George Bush received just 11% of the African American vote in 1992.

The friendly reception, which included a standing ovation when Kemp entered the Challengers gymnasium on Vermont Avenue at 50th Street, was all the more remarkable because it came less than two weeks after Kemp renounced his opposition to California’s Proposition 209, an initiative to end government-related affirmative action programs for minorities and women.

Although a dozen protesters did gather outside the meeting to wave signs that said “Jack Kemp Go Home,” and “Jack Kemp Opposes Youth Programs,” inside the youth club there were mostly words of support. They reflected the small but determined core of minority voters who are drawn to Kemp’s rhetoric of “democratic capitalism.”

“It is indeed a privilege, once again Mr. Kemp, to be sitting at the table with you,” said Nora King, chairwoman of the residents management group at the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts.

Kemp first visited the Challengers Boys and Girls Club four years ago while touring riot-torn L.A. as President Bush’s secretary of housing and urban development. That allowed him to characterize himself Wednesday as the rare politician who makes more than token appearances and as the rare Republican willing to take the GOP campaign to Democratic strongholds such as South-Central Los Angeles, the South Bronx and the District of Columbia.

“I wanted to come back to this very spot to listen and to learn,” he said.

“This country cannot survive having one party take the African American vote for granted and having the other party write it off,” he added, drawing a round of a applause. “This is not the Grand Old Party. This is the Grand New Party. Keep your eyes open, your ears open and your minds open.”

The club serves hundreds of neighborhood youth with a variety of recreation and education programs. On the playground, the former pro quarterback, whose campaign is already awash in football metaphors, introduced himself to the 200 black and Latino children by telling them he’d played 13 years for the San Diego Chargers and the Buffalo Bills. And he introduced his wife Joanne as “the only women in America who is the wife and mother of three pro football quarterbacks.”

He then had friend and Hall of Fame tight end John Mackey (“he was Johnny Unitas’ favorite receiver”) run about 15 yards down the playground blacktop to catch a pass.

“What a thrill it is to be back and see these beautiful faces,” Kemp told the children. “You are the future. You are the most precious asset in America. The whole purpose of our effort is to allow you, as children of God, to reach your full potential.”

In his talk with community leaders, Kemp invoked the names of a half-dozen Democratic icons and activists (including the late Sen. Robert Kennedy, Jesse Jackson and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume) as he touched on familiar themes of self-reliance and empowerment.

“We believe the new civil rights agenda is to take civil rights to the next level,” he said. “To empowerment, entrepreneurship, ownership, success and access to capital and credit.”

Recalling his childhood growing up in Los Angeles, Kemp said his father started a trucking company that made deliveries to Central Avenue stores, a small business that would have never gotten off the ground without start-up capital. “That was back in the days when banks made loans,” he quipped. Later he called for an end to the practice of redlining, in which institutions restrict loans to minority or poor communities.

Kemp also reiterated his support for selling public housing units to tenants, an idea he trumpeted during his four years as HUD secretary. (The program was largely regarded as a failure: The government succeeded in selling only 135 of 1.3 million housing units during Kemp’s four-year tenure).

When Kemp led his entourage of aides and reporters on a tour of a nearby Vermont Avenue shopping center, at least one onlooker expressed skepticism about the GOP ticket.

“Tell him he should have brought Bob Dole,” said shopper Victoria Brown. “We love Jack Kemp already. It’s Bob Dole we need to talk to.”

In driving to the shopping center, Kemp’s caravan passed several blocks along Vermont that were among the worst hit during the fire and looting of the riots. Vacant lots--long ago cleared of buildings gutted during the disturbance--are still scattered along the street.

Walking through a K Mart, a Ralphs grocery and an assortment of small storefronts at the shopping center, Kemp repeated the phrase “Como se llama?” again and again to the Latino shoppers he met. One Latina told Kemp she was from Guatemala and another immigrant told his son, in halting English, “This is the vice president.”

Later, as Kemp walked across the shopping center parking lot, a reporter asked him what he would say to the many illegal immigrants who live in the community: Kemp recently announced he would support proposals to deny education to the children of illegal immigrants, reversing his long-held opposition to such a measure.

“I don’t engage in drive-by journalism,” Kemp shot back as he headed toward a McDonald’s.