Jack Kemp, who was asked to fill in for Bob Dole at last week’s NAACP convention, said Saturday he was “frankly disappointed” Dole didn’t address the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights group.

Kemp, interviewed on CNN’s “Inside Politics Weekend,” also noted that top Republican leaders in Congress and elsewhere are meeting without Dole in order to put economic growth and tax relief high on the GOP election agenda.

Dole said last week his campaign staff did not alert him to the invitation to speak to the national convention of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. But the GOP presidential candidate also said he thought NAACP President Kweisi Mfume was a liberal Democrat who was “trying to set me up” by luring him into a hostile reception.

Kemp said he doesn’t agree with that view. “Kweisi Mfume really did, I believe, offer a sincere invitation. I hope it’s offered again,” said Kemp.


Asked if Dole would have been given a cool reception, Kemp said: “Oh, no. No way. He would have gotten a very receptive reception.”

On another issue, Kemp said he and other Republican figures met on Friday and plan a news conference Wednesday “to announce a conference, almost a Republican summit as it were, in a couple of weeks on this whole issue of what we can do to double the rate of growth of the American economy.”