Real Empowerment

The campaign kick-off event took place on a steamy July afternoon, in a poorly air-conditioned recreation center in Northern Virginia. Small children lounged on swings nearby, splashed in the pool, and pestered the women serving lemonade to political patrons. Several singers opened the meeting; various political figures and one political spouse followed with brief remarks.

It wasn't quite your average fundraiser, though. This particular rec center sat in the midst of a sprawling low-income housing project. The audience--three-quarters Black, mostly residents of the project--cheered loudly, nodded and murmured as speeches unfolded. Later, many local residents stepped to the podium, pledging support and restating their confidence in the candidate.

Who was a Republican.

David Caprara, a challenger candidate for Virginia State Representative, is a former HUD operative and protege of Jack Kemp. He currently runs a business associated with Kemp's political mouthpiece, Empower America. Caprara lacks the charisma of a politician; he's a poor speaker and decidedly untelegenic. Yet he met with an outpouring of support--at least from the small community he got to know while he worked at HUD.

Kemp's HUD agenda (and by extension, Caprara's) was complicated and multifaceted--it consisted of a lot of clean-up and a bit of innovation. His most visible legacy was the problematic "Empowerment Zones" program, which proposed tax breaks and other incentives for businesses that entered specially targeted low-income areas.

"Empowerment" has become a tired word in Kempspeak. It's used to describe a variety of plans, some viable, others hopelessly vague. As a political program, it is incomplete and inapplicable to most national problems.

Still, the idea of empowerment certainly influenced the Northern Virginia neighborhood where Caprara held the fundraiser. The racial makeup of the audience there was remarkable; Republicans aren't exactly known for their support among the Black population.

But there's a special lesson in the Caprara campaign--a lesson not about policy, but politics.

All campaign events are transparent efforts to draw attendees' pens to their checkbooks. But at this one, the tone was a bit more subdued. Kemp noted at one point that Caprara needed money. But he was well aware of this audience's financial capabilities, and emphasized that if Caprara supporters didn't have money to lend to the effort, it didn't matter. Their time and energy were even more valuable.

There's a nugget of truth to the rhetoric of empowerment. Its central theme is an effort to involve people in their communities. Kemp's HUD policies avoided completely imposing "assistance" upon disadvantage people. Instead, they aimed to encourage community members to feel connected to, and responsible for, solutions to their neighborhood dilemmas. "Empowerment" recast politics as a primarily local phenomenon.

Kemp is no longer at the HUD helm, which means his empowerment policies might fade. But his presidential ambitions ensure that empowerment politics will remain visible. If Kemp is successful, his "Empowerment" umbrella--the group, its literature, its offshoot satellite series, its adjunct businesses and associated candidates--may achieve a shift in political thought, a reemphasis on the community as the center of political activity. Religious Right groups like Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition have been using the community-based tactic for years. The principle: field grass-roots candidates for local offices, thereby extending the political network before you enter the national arena.

Political magazines have presented this strategy as an insidious plot, a secret infiltration that Americans won't detect until it's too late. The doomsday articles only betray the media's unmistakable bias against the far right. Independent of ideology and policy goals, the grass-roots network is excellent politics.

Kemp's approach is smart because it applies to more than one segment of the population. Community-based politics, no matter what the community, leads to citizens who are more politically aware, and consequently, politically active.

Offshoot Republican movements have cropped up in abundance since Bush left office. But one thing is clear about Kemp's particular effort at party leadership. Whatever its flaws, it appeals to a population that has never before been receptive to Republications--a population that is too often lost completely in the political shuffle.

And if that segment of the population gains a greater political voice, that may be worth calling real empowerment.