In Silicon Valley, Kemp Praises Promise of High-Tech

Hoisting the flag of entrepreneurship like a standard, Republican vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp on Monday went from a technology magnet school for disadvantaged students to Netscape, among the fastest-growing software companies in history, to pitch what he calls “shareholder democracy.”

On a day when Bob Dole and both halves of the Democratic ticket were all taking a day off the campaign trail, Kemp had the field to himself to tout the benefits of technology and economic growth.

Dole did join Kemp by telephone, making an amplified call to a rally with Silicon Valley executives in which he attacked plaintiffs’ lawyers and an initiative on November’s ballot, Proposition 211, which he singled out as “a deliberate attempt by the plaintiffs’ trial lawyers to get themselves back on the frivolous-lawsuits gravy train.”

Proposition 211 would make it easier for shareholders to sue a company when its stock price changes unexpectedly, a move that high-technology companies, in particular, say would subject them to an increased amount of harassment litigation.

President Clinton also opposes Proposition 211.

Kemp picked up Dole’s entrepreneurial message in his speech, praising the wonders of technology, reiterating his faith in the economic magic of tax cuts and tying both to an appeal for greater inclusion of minorities in the capitalist economy.

“We want everybody to have a part of this great system,” Kemp told a small crowd of Netscape employees gathered in the company parking lot.

“And we’re calling for a new social contract, a socially responsible market economy where businesses like Netscape or Oracle or Sun or any of the businesses in Silicon Valley embrace our public schools, embrace our private schools, and flood them with talent, mentoring, parents who care and the type of technology and information that can unlock the human mind, the human talent and the human potential.”

While Dole has emphasized the virtues of eras past, Kemp has trumpeted the importance of policies that will guide the nation into the next millennium. His speech, at times eloquent, at times rambling, cited economist Adam Smith and quoted civil rights leader Jesse Jackson: “Capitalism without capital is nothing but an ism.”

“You know he’s right,” Kemp said, revealing his trademark tendency to veer into rhetorical turf most Republicans fear to tread. Kemp said that while urban America represents a $900-billion economy, America’s inner cities are “starved for capital.”

Earlier in the morning, Kemp toured the James Flood Science and Technology Magnet School in Menlo Park, a kindergarten through eighth-grade public school with a student body of 300 that is 60% African American, 32% Latino, and largely poor.

About 30 fourth- and seventh-grade students sat quietly in their school uniforms as a bespectacled Jonathan Thomas, 11, clicked Kemp through a tour of the computer technology that will eventually connect every student in the school.

Thomas showed Kemp his favorite site on the World Wide Web, “Live From Mars,” and told him he wanted to be a marine biologist.

Clearly impressed, Kemp called the public-private partnership “a model that can be replicated in every school in America.”

Kemp wrapped up what might have been termed “California High-Tech Appreciation Day” with a rally at Amgen Inc., a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks.

Speaking to about 200 people, including some clutching Clinton-Gore signs, Kemp again praised Dole’s anti-regulatory stands, calling him “one of the godfathers of the biotechnology industry.”

After the Amgen event, Kemp was scheduled to head to Orange County for a fund-raiser.