DOLE, KEMP PUSH PRO-GROWTH AGENDA.

Byline: Richard W. Stevenson The New York Times

When faced with the choice, Jack Kemp has always placed political expediency well behind his passionately held belief that cutting taxes is the best way to stimulate economic growth and bring increased prosperity to both rich and poor.

So when Bob Dole's campaign sought his endorsement before the New Hampshire primary early this year, he rebuffed the entreaties, saying he did not like the way Dole was criticizing the single-rate flat tax being advocated by Steve Forbes. Forbes was then gaining on Dole in the polls, and several months later Kemp endorsed Forbes' candidacy, even after it was clear that Dole was set to capture the Republican presidential nomination.

The move, which seemed an ill-considered effort to keep the tax and growth issues on the Republican agenda, infuriated Dole and much of the party leadership.

Now Kemp and his agenda have swept from the Republican Party's fringes into the heart of the presidential campaign, putting the ``pro-growth,'' tax-cutting philosophy front and center in the national political debate for the first time since the Reagan administration.

``It was a combination of people and ideas and my own tenacity or obnoxiousness,'' Kemp said in an interview last week, before his name surfaced as Dole's potential running mate. ``But the ultimate force, as it were, in all of this is the power of the idea. I always thought that the supply-side, incentive-oriented growth wing of the party had the best and the only way to get more growth in the economy.''

Kemp proved himself effective, if somewhat clumsy, at keeping his economic views on the Republican agenda over the last few months, when it seemed that Dole's victory in the primaries had ended any chance of the party's supply-side wing playing an influential role in the election. His clout was particularly evident at a Capitol Hill forum last month when he instigated a public endorsement of sweeping tax cuts by nearly all the Republican leadership of Congress, raising the pressure on Dole to go down the same path.

The forum had its roots in a meeting Kemp held earlier this summer with several of his best friends from his days in the House: Speaker Newt Gingrich; Trent Lott of Mississippi, now the Senate majority leader; and Sen. Connie Mack of Florida. The meeting of the group, which gathers regularly and calls itself The Amigos, did not get off to a friendly start.

Kemp, said one participant, attacked Gingrich and Lott for not doing more to pursue the supply-side agenda they had vigorously supported in the past. Citing the deteriorating economy of Washington as an example, Kemp said that if the Republican Party did not start doing more to stimulate economic growth, it would ``consign the party of Lincoln to white, suburban, angry male voters.''

The meeting became so heated that Mack began to walk out. After everyone calmed down, Gingrich and Lott agreed to do something to invigorate the ``pro growth'' debate. Without first clearing the idea with the Dole campaign, they settled on the public forum as the best way to start.

Some people in the Dole campaign were annoyed by Kemp's maneuver. But Dole's top policy adviser, Donald H. Rumsfeld, defense secretary and chief of staff in the Ford White House, agreed to join The Amigos at the growth forum, a powerful signal that Dole was sympathetic to their message.

``I was not there to upstage the Dole campaign,'' Kemp said. ``I was there to get Newt and Trent and Connie to elevate the issue again, because balancing the budget is not the be-all and end-all of the American economy.''

Even before Dole made the leap from pillar of fiscal rectitude into Reaganesque tax cutter, Kemp had seen many of his former aides and associates take positions of influence in the Dole campaign.

Rumsfeld was on the board of Kemp's research and advocacy group, Empower America, and shares many of his supply-side views. Vin Weber, a former member of Congress from Minnesota who is Dole's other main policy adviser, is a close friend of Kemp and a supply-side soulmate from their days in the House in the 1980s.

Scott Reed, Dole's campaign manager, was Kemp's chief of staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Bush administration. John Buckley, Dole's communications director, also worked for Kemp, as did Kevin Stach, the Dole staff member who coordinated the campaign's economic plan. Dole even developed a close relationship over the past several weeks with Forbes, who described Kemp earlier this year as his ``guru in chief.''

``Jack is the apostle of growth in the Republican Party,'' Buckley said last month, ``and in the final analysis will be a very helpful part of the Dole team in highlighting the dissatisfaction with Clinton's anemic economic growth and the Dole plan for remedying it.''

KEMP AND THE ISSUES

Here are positions that Jack Kemp has taken on some major issues:

ABORTION: Strongly opposes abortion, except to save the mother's life. Against federal funding of abortion and has expressed support for a constitutional amendment banning most abortions.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Supports affirmative action and feels that race is a legitimate factor in equal employment and economic matters.

CRIME: Favors capital punishment; believes in the death penalty for terrorists, presidential assassins and premeditated murder. Says, however, that inner-city vitalization is as important as building more prisons.

EDUCATION: Favors school vouchers to allow parents to send children to public or private school of their choice with taxpayer help. Also supports voluntary school prayer through a moment of silence.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS: Strong backer of Israel and aid for Russia. Also a consistent supporter of defense spending.

BIG GOVERNMENT: Favors scaling back federal departments and agencies, and turning certain functions back to state and local governments.

FLAT TAX: Strongly favors replacing the current income tax system with a flat tax.

GAYS, LESBIANS: Has said that local school boards should have right to keep homosexual teachers out of the classroom.

GOLD STANDARD: Favors returning to the pre-1971 system of backing the dollar with gold.

GUN CONTROL: Firmly supports the right to bear arms and gun ownership, but also favors ban on assault weapons.

HEALTH CARE: Has opposed requiring employers to pay for their workers' health insurance. Supports allowing workers to take their health insurance from one job to another. Favors medical savings accounts.

HOUSING: Favors tenant ownership of public housing.

IMMIGRATION: Has been critical of efforts to curb immigration by eliminating benefits for legal immigrants.

SOCIAL SECURITY/MEDICARE: Favors allowing a deduction for Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes.

CAPTION(S):

Box: KEMP AND THE ISSUES (see text)