“I remember distinctly him asking me if I was a supply-side fiscalist. That was the term that was being used in those days. I swear to God I’d never heard that term before in my life. But I didn’t have anything to lose, so I said, “Well, sure. Who isn’t?” or something like that. And I think that’s all he needed to hear, because he ran off, and then Randy and I went and had a couple of beers, and the next thing I know, I was hired.”

“My first experience with Jack coming here and I was on the bench, I’d just played coming into my first game with Jack, and about the last twenty seconds of the game we were playing the Patriots and we were behind. Coach Saban and John Mazur said, ‘Ferg, we want to put you in and run a post and run like hell.’… Jack threw the ball, and it was there, and I caught the pass and it was an 80-yard touchdown pass. We won the game.”

“We really started working with Jack in 1984, and it was sort of a tacit plan to get him to run for president. He didn’t have to commit to it and we didn’t expect him to, and he didn’t really make the decision until sometime in the second half of 1986, but that group that had formed around him pretty much was the makings of a campaign team.”

“The first year of the AFL we were the Los Angeles Chargers. We knew we were, but not too many people in Los Angeles knew we were. But anyway, so Jack and I met the first day of practice, and for some reason we hit it off as friends, and his roommate and my roommate at the time got cut pretty early and we roomed together.”

“I got involved in the campaign because Jack and I served on the Republican Party Platform Committee in 1984 down in Dallas. We first met in 1980 in Detroit, and I remember Drew Lewis coming up one time and saying, “You guys have got to tone down those issues a little bit.”

“The first thing I wrote down was presence. When he walked in, there was something about the guy that just drew you to him. Charisma, however you want to define it.”

“I had met Jack Kemp through Dan Quayle, because I was working for Dan Quayle prior to my getting into the race when he made his decision to run for the Senate. I was introduced to Jack Kemp, and once you’re introduced to Jack Kemp, you never forget him. He becomes a part of your life, and he makes you a part of his life. That was one of his great strengths, I think.”

“Well, if I were to use a scriptural reference, Jack was the John the Baptist of the conservative movement. Ronald Reagan was the one who made us capable of being able to actually have the conservative movement, and ended up in changing America and ultimately changing the world. Jack was there before Ronald Reagan was in Washington, D.C.; Jack had the power of his ideas.”

“I remember after the convention in ’88, Jack said, “I’ll do what you want. Tell me where you want me to go. I’ll go and give speeches and anything I can to help.” He came back after one of them and he said to me, “I’m giving these speeches and I realize about halfway through, I’m not talking about Bush anymore; I’m talking about me.” It was always, “Bush will do this and this and this and this,” and it was all the things Jack had been saying up to the point of leaving the campaign about what Jack Kemp would do. And in truth, there actually wasn’t all that much difference between what Bush was saying that he would do and Jack, because it was following on Ronald Reagan.”

“You know most people who come to Washington are fixated on finding out what the conventional wisdom is and staying with it, and Kemp really didn’t have that chip.”