A #1 Draft Choice: How Jack Kemp Learned Politics

Abstract Jack Kemp’s ascent from cast-off professional football player to conservative national figure requires understanding how the phases of his athletic career, which he filtered through his on-field experiences, shaped his unorthodox hybridity. He was in many ways a standard small-government conservative advocating the tenets of the technocratic Sunbelt New Right, but one who took surprisingly progressive stands on issues of labor and race very much at odds with developing Republican orthodoxy.