WI: Jack Kemp is the Republican Nominee, 2000

A fairly straightforward question. Former HUD Secretary and conservative hero Jack Kemp had been heavily speculated as a possible presidential contender in the run-up to the 2000 presidential election, but he announced that he would not run and instead endorsed then-Texas Governor George W. Bush.

However, what if Bush, for whatever reason, decides not to run, prompting Kemp to announce a run for the presidency. I assume (though anyone who feels I'm wrong, speak up) that he would become the early front runner in much the same way as Bush did in real life, receiving some unexpected trouble from John McCain but ultimately prevailing after winning through a pretty narrow GOP field.

So how does the campaign go? Who does Kemp pick as his running mate? What issues does he campaign on? How does the Gore campaign counter Kemp differently than they did Bush? Would the dynamic to the race be much different? What sort of states do each candidate win? And most importantly, who becomes the 43rd President of the United States in this scenario?
 
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Very neat question. Intuitively, I'd say that Kemp is a stronger candidate than Bush, but whomever runs Kemp's campaign will probably not be as good as Rove was in 2000.

In particular: it was a stroke of sheer genius for Rove to spend resources campaigning in Tennessee (Gore's home state) and West Virginia (a state so reliably blue that it had voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988.

If you give Gore's campaign TN (11) and WV (5); that's a total of 282 EV. This means that Kemp will need to pry 14 EV away from Gore to win. Seems to me there are two ways to do this: a "midwestern" strategy where Kemp wins two of WI, IA, and MN, or by winning Pennsylvania.

Kemp is going to have to pick a VP to placate the Christian conservative wing of the party. The "midwestern" strategy probably augurs for John Ashcroft of Missouri; the Pennsylvania strategy suggests Rick Santorum, who actually won re-election (albeit very narrowly) in Pennsylvania IOTL in 2000; he wasn't quite the national joke he would become just a few years later.

Either choice is going to help Gore among disaffected lefties who IOTL voted for Nader.
 
Bush would crush him in fundraising, endorsements, and then would dump him out of the race before or immediately after Iowa. In a Bushless race, replace Bush's name with other midwestern governor (or less likely, senator) the establishment coalesces around.
 
Kemp is going to have to pick a VP to placate the Christian conservative wing of the party. The "midwestern" strategy probably augurs for John Ashcroft of Missouri; the Pennsylvania strategy suggests Rick Santorum, who actually won re-election (albeit very narrowly) in Pennsylvania IOTL in 2000; he wasn't quite the national joke he would become just a few years later.

Hmm, how about then-Illinois Senator Peter Fitzgerald? From the vantage point of 1999/2000, Illinois was still considered a swing state (both Bush and Gore spent large amounts of resources in that state). Not only that, but Fitzgerald was simultaneously a big social conservative and a maverick on several important issues (for one, he would support McCain-Feingold).

So, you have a VP pick that would strengthen the Kemp campaign's prospects in Illinois and the Midwest in general (or at least would have the perception of doing so), would solidify the ticket with social conservatives, and have some appeal to McCain supporters.
 
Look at the OP again. I ask what if Kemp had run and Bush hadn't run.

Answered.

The GOP wanted to get way from its congressional side post-impeachment. If it hadn't been Bush, it would have been Frank Keating, John Engler, or possibly John Ashcroft. Not a Reagan era middle-of-the-road Congressman and failed VP candidate.
 
Answered.

The GOP wanted to get way from its congressional side post-impeachment. If it hadn't been Bush, it would have been Frank Keating, John Engler, or possibly John Ashcroft. Not a Reagan era middle-of-the-road Congressman and failed VP candidate.

A) Kemp had a lot of star power.

B) He wouldn't have been easily tied to the Gingrich-era of Congress, seeing as he hadn't been in the House since 1989.
 
Very neat question. Intuitively, I'd say that Kemp is a stronger candidate than Bush, but whomever runs Kemp's campaign will probably not be as good as Rove was in 2000.

In particular: it was a stroke of sheer genius for Rove to spend resources campaigning in Tennessee (Gore's home state) and West Virginia (a state so reliably blue that it had voted for Michael Dukakis in 1988.

If you give Gore's campaign TN (11) and WV (5); that's a total of 282 EV. This means that Kemp will need to pry 14 EV away from Gore to win. Seems to me there are two ways to do this: a "midwestern" strategy where Kemp wins two of WI, IA, and MN, or by winning Pennsylvania.

Kemp is going to have to pick a VP to placate the Christian conservative wing of the party. The "midwestern" strategy probably augurs for John Ashcroft of Missouri; the Pennsylvania strategy suggests Rick Santorum, who actually won re-election (albeit very narrowly) in Pennsylvania IOTL in 2000; he wasn't quite the national joke he would become just a few years later.

Either choice is going to help Gore among disaffected lefties who IOTL voted for Nader.

Or, you could go the other route, and pick a different Pennsylvanian. Ridge would get Kemp Pennsylvania, and more than likely Iowa, Wisconsin, and New Mexico. That brings Gore down to 236 from your projection. If you give him back a few points for conservatives staying home in Ohio and Missouri, Gore has 268, Florida give him 293.

Now... Kemp/Ridge + Rove, the GOP walks in with over 300 EV, but the cabinet and SCOTUS appointments will see a LOT of religious pandering.

Put Santorum a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, and 9/10 of Pennsylvanians who voted for Nader OTL would be voting Gore. He was divisive early on in PA, but didn't screw up enough to lose his Senate seat in '00.
 
He would be a stronger candidate, but his success largely depends on how he does during the debates; debating was not his strong suit, in large part because he refused to be coached and would go into them blind. Part of me thinks he would have learned from the '96 debacle, but then again, he might not have.
 
Why would that be a big issue?

It wouldn't, unless the Democrats try and make an issue of it. Problem is, its not one of those issues that many people would actually care about, in the sense that they know what it even is. If it was one the same political scale as Abortion for example, the it might prove to be an issue.
 
Gore wins by a fairly comfortable margin; polling of the period only had Gore in trouble if Bush or McCain ran. IIRC Kemp fell into the same old Ashcroft/Whitman/Quayle/Alexander area of being around 10 points behind Gore.
 
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