“I was working at the American Enterprise Institute at the time… I got a call on April 16th, 1977 from Jack, personally, he called me on the phone and he said, “I have an opening in my office and I’ve heard a lot about you. Would you come in for an interview?” I was totally taken aback because I certainly didn’t expect to pick up the phone and hear his voice.”

“I was the New Hampshire political director, and 25 years old at the time… I started volunteering for the campaign, and pretty much I think I harassed them so much about trying to get a job, and I think I was one of the only people in New Hampshire that may have had a computer. The campaign office didn’t have any equipment that they finally relented. I don’t know if it’s because of my skills or because I had technology.”

“And I ran into Jude at one of these things, maybe it was National Journal, I can’t remember, but he said, ‘Oh, there’s this wonderful congressman, big tax cut, pro-growth.’ I said, ‘Wow, this goes against the grain.’ And first heard Laffer’s name. So I read about Laffer, read about Jack, loved the Kemp-Roth bill. Met him soon thereafter, wasn’t hard, you know you wanted to meet him you met him.”

“When I would come in and out of the Bush White House,… as one of the few Republican mayors, then I’d have the opportunity to intersect with Jack, and then after he left, we stayed as friends [H]e knew I remained an advocate for his policies, so when he had something particularly enthusiastic to say he thought mayors should pay attention to he would call and I would repeat it with equal vigor.”

“So he was in my hometown, and I wanted to hear him as the quarterback of the Buffalo Bills and get his autograph. When you think about accessible, he was great with kids. He was great with people back when he was in the glory of the Buffalo Bills as the star quarterback.”

“I remember I was in the pasta business at the time and we used to have these meetings in Washington once a year, and you were allowed to invite your congressman. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll invite Jack. I never expected that Jack would actually come, because he was a superstar, as far as I was concerned.”

“We were the revolutionaries and Jack was our leader, he was our spiritual leader. Now Jack was undisciplined as a leader. That’s why he needed, modestly, somebody like me that would actually take the time to count the votes and try to help make it happen. He was out there driving it with a vision, but somebody else had to do the routine work.”

“Every battle was an opportunity to accomplish something. Every crisis was an opportunity to improve things. And I think that permeated his approach to politics and was tremendously important. But I also think it’s just hugely important for people to understand, there was no ill will in Jack Kemp. I mean, it’s not that he was a flawless human being. He had flaws, of course, but I never ever heard him demean anybody else, I never heard him speak with anything that might have approached what we would call hateful feelings.”

“I was probably focused more on myself that first year in the Senate than anything else, trying to figure out what I could do to get things going on my own behalf. But it couldn’t have been very long after that before you began to sense that in that freshman class in the House, which I had just left, there were some really exciting new people that were hard-chargers and that were going to change the conversation. Jack was probably foremost among those.”

“I first went to work for Jack at HUD in February of 1989, and worked through various capacities till 1996… At HUD we’d have huge debates, and then you had Sharon’s golden rule at the end of the day, ‘If you really want Jack to do something, ask him to do the opposite.’ And you’ll get what you need… We were never bored, never bored.”