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Jesse Helms Oct. 18, 1921 - July 4, 2008
'A national force ... for his constituents'
AP File Photo
In this file photo from 1976, Ronald Reagan (left) confers with Sen. Jesse Helms before speaking at the Benton Convention Center. Helms backed Reagan in his run for the Republican nomination in 1976.
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Published: July 5, 2008
RALEIGH - RALEIGH - Jesse Helms, a conservative icon who wielded political power in North Carolina and in Washington across 60 years, died of natural causes yesterday morning.
Helms, 86, rose out of a small, cotton-farming town to become a sharp-tongued commentator and five-term U.S. senator capable of making or breaking presidents.
In editorials and on the Senate floor, he railed against civil rights, government spending, abortion, homosexuality, pornography and communism.
He died of natural causes early yesterday morning at the Raleigh convalescent home where he had lived for the past several years.
"He was very comfortable," said former chief of staff Jimmy Broughton.
Funeral services are planned for Tuesday at Helms' longtime church in Raleigh.
"It's just incredible that he would die on July 4, the same day of the Declaration of Independence and the same day that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died, and he certainly is a patriot in the mold of those great men," said former North Carolina GOP Rep. Bill Cobey. He is now the chairman of The Jesse Helms Center in Wingate.
At times, Helms would stand alone for causes he believed in, earning such nicknames as "Senator No,"
a "knight in shining armor" and the "Prince of Darkness."
The nation became aware of Helms' views during his 30 years in the upper chamber of Congress, but North Carolinians -- especially those who remember his days as a TV commentator on WRAL in Raleigh -- know that he shared them much earlier.
Small-town boy
Jesse Alexander Helms Jr., the second of three children, was born Oct. 18, 1921, in Monroe. His father was an officer in -- and later the chief of -- the combined fire and police departments, and his mother was a homemaker.
Helms fondly remembered the town of 3,000 people as a tight-knit community, a place where people were compassionate, proud, resourceful and self-reliant. He recalled shady streets, quiet Sundays, cotton wagons and the observance of Confederate Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.
"Our home ties were very strong, and the church the dominant influence in our lives," Helms wrote in When Free Men Shall Stand, his 1976 book of short essays. "Small towns in the South, moreover, have seldom been known as havens of affluence, and the Great Depression hit them with a particular virulence."
Helms attended Wingate Junior College, a Baptist college near Monroe, for a year and then transferred to Wake Forest College, then located in Wake County. He never graduated, choosing instead to focus on outside jobs and military service.
He worked odd jobs, including digging holes for utility polls and proofreading at the Raleigh News & Observer for 50 cents an hour. After he left school, Helms became a sports reporter for The News & Observer, and later he joined the Raleigh Times as an assistant city editor.
But when the U.S. entered World War II, Helms enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a recruiter and a spokesman in Elizabeth City. He also got married. He had met Dorothy Coble, a society writer, and they married in 1942.
After the war, he returned to the Raleigh Times as the city editor and he worked for a Roanoke Rapids radio station, WCBT. In 1948, A.J. Fletcher, the founder of WRAL in Raleigh, was looking for a news director for his small radio station. Fletcher and Helms shared a traditional, conservative philosophy, and Helms got the job.
He reported on the 1950 U.S. Senate race between incumbent Frank Porter Graham and challenger Willis Smith, both Democrats. At times, Helms openly advocated Smith's election, at one point broadcasting on WRAL for supporters to rally at Smith's house and call for a runoff election.
The rally worked, and Smith called for a runoff the next day. It was marked by charges of communist sympathy and race baiting, including doctored photographs of Graham's wife dancing with a black man.
Helms later denied involvement in the attacks, though after Smith won he appointed Helms his administrative assistant in Washington. While there, Helms also served as a spokesman for the 1952 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Richard Russell, a segregationist from Georgia. Russell finished third in balloting at the Democratic convention that year.
Helms returned to work for Smith, but Smith died in 1953 and, after a short time working for Smith's appointed replacement -- Sen. Alton Lennon -- Helms ended his first experience with Washington politics.
Making a name
In 1957, Helms decided to make his first run for public office. He won a seat on the Raleigh City Council, where he stayed for two terms and fought against increases in taxes and spending.
Then, as a new decade brought a dominant new medium, Helms grabbed an opportunity that thrust him into the political spotlight. Fletcher offered him the vice presidency of WRAL, along with a daily, five-minute editorial on TV known as "Viewpoint."
For the next 12 years, Helms used "Viewpoint" as a pulpit to preach a conservative vision for the state and country.
He gave 2,761 of the editorials. Often the editorials were also broadcast on statewide radio and reprinted in newspapers.
Regarding efforts to help the poor, Helms said on Oct. 2, 1964, "It boils down to the fact that the ‘haves' in this country are really those people who are willing to work for a living. The ‘have nots,' in an incredible number of cases, are those who are not interested in a job of any sort."
When it came to people protesting for civil rights, against the Vietnam War or for any other causes, Helms had little sympathy.
"The guy who works for a living has neither the time nor the inclination to march in protest movements," Helms said on June 27, 1966. And, while many Southerners such as Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., would later moderate their positions, at least in public, Helms hung on to the ideas he espoused in "Viewpoint."
The editorials gave Helms a wide audience to share his views with, but it also gave him something else -- an electorate. He quit broadcasting in 1972 to run for the U.S. Senate, and his name recognition as a commentator made him an instant competitor.
Still, Helms faced an uphill campaign as a Republican. No member of the party had been elected to the Senate from North Carolina since Jeter Pritchard won a seat in 1897. As were many conservatives at the time, Helms was new to the GOP, having left the Democratic Party in 1970.
Helms wasn't the first conservative, Southern Democrat to switch parties -- Thurmond switched in 1964 -- but he was among the first prominent figures to do so in North Carolina.
Helms beat the Democrat, U.S. Rep. Nick Galifianakis of Durham, with 54 percent of the vote. Richard Nixon's landslide re-election helped, as did the support of many conservative Democrats and segregationists.
"The leadership hasn't brought this party to where it is now," said Sim A. Delapp of Lexington, a former chairman of the N.C. Republican Party, in 1974, according to The Charlotte Observer.
"I can tell you what's brought it -- and any man that knows politics knows. The race question brought it," Delapp said. "The Democratic Party leaned toward the liberals and the dissident elements of the population so much that North Carolinians got tired of it and came over to us."
Bully pulpit
In his first statewide election, Helms assumed an office that he would use for the next 30 years and a role that would help ignite a conservative movement, as well as a liberal countermovement. He would antagonize presidents of both parties, block the approval of presidential appointees, advance conservative legislation and even antagonize a few countries.
He also quickly went about building a machine to stay in office, in the form of the National Congressional Club.
Tom Ellis, one of Helms' closest friends, founded the club to retire a $350,000 debt from the 1972 campaign. Over the next 20 years, the club's main goal was always to keep Helms in office, but it also helped to elect other conservative candidates and advance conservative ideas.
The club didn't invent any new ideas about politicking, but it did refine several ideas into a daunting political base of fervent conservatives. The base stretched nationwide in the form of mailings to as many as 300,000 regular supporters.
"His campaign style and approach to how you run a campaign was largely new -- raise a lot of money, hire outside consultants, create your own campaign structure, use attack ads," said Thad Beyle, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "He came out of the media. He obviously knew how those tough ads could get right into the living room."
The club was also instrumental in Ronald Reagan winning the state's presidential primary in 1976. The victory salvaged Reagan's campaign and propelled him to the nomination in 1980 -- but, to the disappointment of Helms supporters, Reagan didn't return the favor by picking Helms as his vice presidential running mate, choosing the more-moderate George H.W. Bush instead.
For all of Helms' bluster and electoral success, he had few legislative accomplishments. Other senators rejected most of his ideas, either by voting them down or ignoring them.
Among the issues he championed most were a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, U.S. control of the Panama Canal, the elimination of federal funding for the arts, neutrality in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the elimination of affirmative action and the restoration of prayer in public schools.
Helms did succeed in winning continued federal protection of several industries important to North Carolina. He fought improved trade relations with China, and in the mid-1980s, as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, he reworked the price-support system for tobacco.
He also succeeded at saying, "No."
He blocked nominees for the federal courts, for ambassadorships and for executive-branch positions, not to mention foreign treaties. He delayed the approval of President Reagan's nominee for ambassador to China in 1985 because he wanted Reagan to cancel money for the U.N. Fund for Population Activities.
For many years, he opposed foreign aid, which he saw as undeserved and as contrary to the free market.
"The harsh truth is, there are many countries in the world that are materially very badly off," Helms wrote in When Free Men Shall Stand. "It is our duty to help them. The way to help them is to share with them our political philosophy and our expertise and to encourage private investment there."
Political survivor
The biggest test of Helms' popularity came in 1984 with his campaign for a third term.
Gov. Jim Hunt, a Democrat, had spent an unprecedented eight years as governor, during which he increased money for education and made other reforms that appealed to a broad constituency. At age 47, Hunt was ready for a new challenge, and he eyed Helms' Senate seat. In mid-1983, polls showed him with a double-digit lead that led many observers to declare an early victory for Hunt.
Helms took note, and in fall 1983, he began running television commercials. Some talked about President Reagan's support of Helms; others accused Hunt of waffling on such issues as the Panama Canal and the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday. The ads helped Helms to pull even with the governor by early 1984.
Over the next year, the race dominated headlines and newscasts and drew the attention of national media and political groups. It became the most expensive Senate race in history to that point -- totaling $22 million.
Helms' victory over Hunt was close, but it was still a victory -- a phenomenon that was a refrain throughout Helms' Senate career.
Each time, the Congressional Club would help turnout with statewide mailings and television commercials designed to inflame voter passion on divisive issues.
In 1990, Harvey Gantt, a former Charlotte mayor and a moderate Democrat, challenged Helms. As did Hunt, Gantt held an initial lead on Helms, but the incumbent fought back with ads that have since become famous -- or, in some cases, infamous.
"You needed that job and you were the best qualified," said the announcer in one Helms ad, as viewers saw white hands crumpling a rejection letter. "But they gave it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is."
Helms and his campaign stood by the ad, and they won another narrow victory.
The Republican landslide of November 1994 gave Helms a new opportunity to wield power against a Democratic president. As a senior member of the new Republican majority in the Senate, Helms became the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
He held the position until May 2001, when Democrats took back control. During his six years as chairman, Helms blocked foreign aid, international treaties and many administration appointees by simply declining to hold hearings.
He refused a hearing for former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, D-Ill., whom President Clinton wanted to appoint as ambassador to New Zealand. Moseley Braun had been the first black woman to serve in the Senate, but she and Helms often sparred in debate, including over the renewal of a patent for the emblem of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
At one point, when they were both senators, Helms sang "Dixie" while in an elevator with Moseley Braun and had sworn to make her cry. She took it in stride, telling him, "Sen. Helms, your singing would make me cry if you sang ‘Rock of Ages.'" They both looked back fondly on the episode.
Strong legacy
Former Helms aides are keeping his legacy alive. They continue to have influence in state politics, and they have held positions in the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Security Council, Republican consulting firms and other powerful institutions.
"We collectively are going to be influencing U.S. policy for decades to come," said Marc Thiessen, a former foreign-policy aide to Helms who was the chief speechwriter for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when Helms retired. "Every one of us was attracted to work for Senator Helms because we believed in the same things he did. We're not clones, but we have the same set of core beliefs."
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