WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Jack Kemp, a star football  quarterback who became a congressman, US Cabinet secretary  and Republican vice presidential nominee, died on Saturday at  age 73.

Kemp died of cancer at his home in Bethesda, Maryland, The  New York Times said, quoting his son, Jimmy Kemp.

He served 18 years as a congressman from Buffalo, New York,  after starring with the Buffalo Bills of the old American  Football League. In the House of Representatives, he championed  tax cuts, free trade, economic growth and a return to the gold  standard.

Kemp ran unsuccessfully for his party’s presidential  nomination in 1988 and was Republican presidential nominee Bob  Dole’s running mate in the 1996 election.

Kemp also served as secretary of housing and urban  development under President George H.W. Bush.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Kemp  “championed free market principles that improved the lives of  millions of Americans and helped unleash an entrepreneurial  spirit that all of us still benefit from today.”

“Jack was a leading voice for a strong national defense,  civil rights, and any other policy that empowered people,”  McConnell said in the statement on Saturday night.

Kemp used his muscles to rise to the top levels of  professional football and then his brain to promote economic  growth as a politician.

A hard-nosed competitor in his quarterback days with the  Bills and San Diego Chargers in the 1960s, he could be a dogged  ideologue for pro-growth tax-cut policies when he was a  congressman in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Kemp was something of a surprise choice when Dole, a Kansas  senator, tapped him to be his running mate on the 1996  Republican ticket.

The two were not close and had clashed often on policy.  Dole was a life-long budget-balancing devotee opposed to  unfinanced tax cuts. Kemp saw tax cutting as the priority goal  indispensable to growth.

But Dole shifted his stance to make the promise of a 15  percent tax cut the heart of his losing campaign against  President Bill Clinton.

The California-born Kemp won AFL championships with the  Bills in 1964 and 1965.

He was voted the league’s most valuable player in 1965 and  held the AFL records for most passes attempted, most passes  completed and most passing yardage gained. He retired in 1969  and the AFL later merged with the National Football League.