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Major Player

The District Weekly

January 21, 2009

By Dave Wielenga

He calls his firm the Kemp Group, although he doesn’t mind acknowledging it isn’t much of one—a group, that is. “Just me and my legal secretary, Ivana Lauro,” says Carl Kemp, speaking with his characteristically slow-cooking self-confidence, which melts the self-deprecation from that statement. Or maybe it’s something else Kemp melts with his piercing green eyes.

Anyway, the Kemp Group is a lot bigger when you include its clients: Boeing Realty; Pacific Merchant Shipping Association; Urban Growth Long Beach; and 2nd+pch. They’re some of the most powerful forces in Long Beach. They pay Carl Kemp to help make them even more powerful.

Go ahead and call him a lobbyist. “I say ‘lobbyist,’ ” says Kemp. “I don’t try to beat around the bush. By and large that’s what I do—in addition to community outreach and press relations. People have a certain understanding of what the word means. For those who have a negative attitude about it, I try to redefine the word by the way I approach the job.”

Kemp seems almost ridiculously well qualified to help his clients negotiate the tricky path through the who-knows-who of Long Beach politics and the who-knows-how of its various community interest groups. After two terms as student body president at Long Beach State from 1995-97, he was recruited to city hall as a staffer for then-council member Mike Donelon, was scooped up by former City Manager Jim Hankla when Donelon wasn’t re-elected, and subsequently worked for successive City Managers Henry Taboada and Jerry Miller. After seven years managing government affairs and information there—communicating council and staff priorities to the city’s lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and Sacramento—he started a similar program at the Port of Long Beach. After jumping to the private sector with Englander and Associates a couple years ago, Kemp started his own firm last August. Kind of weird for someone who grew up wanting to be a veterinarian. “I’m still pretty much a whiz at the animal categories on Jeopardy,” he says.

Although he’s only 36 with a business that’s less than six months old, there’s no whiz-kid in Kemp’s demeanor; he’s got the air of a major player, right down to his suspicion of every question he’s asked and the precision of every answer he gives. Like when I ask, “Do you work for clients based on how their objectives match up with your personal philosophy or on how those objectives match your expertise?”

“A little bit of both,” he says. “But a lot of it is a template whereby I try to understand the issue to the best extent I can, then decide whether or not I can get behind it. If I can, the rest of what I bring to the table—with regard to what I have learned over the years—can be used to promote or defend that cause. At a certain level, lobbying is sales. But it’s really about human engagement and getting to a solution that makes the most sense for all parties involved. I learned that from Jerry Miller.”