Former senator
Jesse Helms, an unyielding champion of the conservative
movement who spent three combative and sometimes caustic
decades in Congress, where he relished his battles
against liberals, Communist,s and occasionally a
fellow Republican, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.
''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 representative Bill Cobey.
An iconic figure
of the South, remembered by many for his opposition to
the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Helms had faded from public view
as his health declined. He died of natural causes
early Friday 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's longtime church in
Raleigh.
The son of a
police chief, Helms first became known to North Carolina
voters through his newspaper and television commentaries.
They were a harbinger of what was to come, as he won
election to the Senate in 1972 and rose to become a
powerful committee chairman before deciding not to
seek a sixth term in 2002.
''Compromise,
hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why
should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a
roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?''
Helms wrote in a 1959 editorial.
Compromise, Helms
would not.
His habit of
blocking nominations and legislation during his first term
led his former employer, The News & Observer of
Raleigh, to nickname him ''Senator No'' -- and Helms
loved it. He was unafraid of inconveniencing his
fellow senators, forcing filibusters before holidays
and once objecting to a request by phoning in his dissent
from home while watching Senate proceedings on
television.
Helms was a
polarizing figure, both at home and in Washington. He
delighted in forcing roll-call votes that required Democrats
to take politically difficult votes on federal funding
for art he deemed pornographic, school busing,
flag-burning, and other cultural issues. Among his
first forays into politics was working in 1950 to elect
segregationist candidate Willis Smith to the Senate, and he
later fought against much of the civil rights
movement.
In 1993, when
then-president Clinton sought confirmation for an openly
gay assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and
Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. ''I'm
not going to put a lesbian in a position like that,''
he said in a newspaper interview at the time. ''If you
want to call me a bigot, fine.''
''When he wrote
his book, Here's Where I Stand, I felt no book was
needed,'' said North Carolina senator Elizabeth Dole, who
won Helms's seat after he retired in 2002. ''[My
husband] Bob would say, 'You don't have to look under
the table for Jesse. You always knew where Jesse
is.'''
But Helms wasn't
entirely inflexible, especially in his later years in
the Senate, where he worked with Democrats to restructure
the foreign policy bureaucracy and pay back debts to
the United Nations, an organization he disdained for
most of his career. After years of clashes with gay
activists, he softened his views on AIDS and advocated
greater federal funding to fight the disease in Africa
and elsewhere overseas, and in doing so, struck up an
enduring and unlikely friendship with U2 front man
Bono.
''There was
trouble in my band for even having the meeting with the
senator,'' Bono said in a 2008 documentary, recalling the
objections of his bandmate the Edge. ''And I
said, 'It's worse than that, Edge. He's coming to the
gig.' He said, 'There's no way Jesse Helms is coming
to the U2 show,' and I said, 'He is.'''
At the show,
Helms marveled at the U2 fans waving their hands like a
field of corn blowing in the wind. ''He said, 'I had to turn
my hearing aid down -- in fact I had to turn it
off,''' Bono said.
Helms served as
chairman of the Agriculture and Foreign Relations
committees at times when the GOP held the Senate majority.
He used the posts to protect his state's tobacco
growers and other farmers, and he placed his stamp on
foreign policy with a strident opposition to
Communism.
''Under his
leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a
powerful force for freedom,'' said President Bush. ''And
today, from Central America to Central Europe and
beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the
forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took
their side.''
He took a dim
view of many arms control treaties and supported the
contras in Nicaragua as well as the right-wing government of
El Salvador. He opposed the Panama Canal treaties that
then-president Carter pushed through a reluctant
Senate in 1977.
As Fidel Castro's
fierce critic, Helms helped create legislation in 1996
to strengthen U.S. restrictions against the Caribbean
island's communist government. The Helms-Burton law
bars the United States from normalizing relations with
Cuba as long as Castro or his brother Raul -- who has been
president since February -- are involved in the island
nation's government.
In his memoirs,
Helms made clear that his opinions on other issues had
hardly moderated since he left office. He likened abortion
to the Holocaust and the September 11 terror attacks.
''I will never be
silent about the death of those who cannot speak for
themselves,'' he wrote in Here's Where I Stand.
Helms was born in
Monroe, N.C., on October 18, 1921. He attended
both Wingate College and Wake Forest College but never
graduated and went on to serve in the Navy during
World War II. He worked as Smith's top staff aide for
a time after his election, then returned to Raleigh as
executive director of the state bankers association.
Helms became a
member of the Raleigh city council in 1957 and got his
first public platform for espousing his conservative views
when he became a television editorialist for WRAL in
Raleigh in 1960. He also wrote a column that at one
time was carried in 200 newspapers.
Helms and his
wife, Dorothy, had two daughters and a son. They adopted
the boy in 1962 after the child, 9 years old and suffering
from cerebral palsy, said in a newspaper article that
he wanted parents. That story stood out for Dole and
others Friday, as they said that for all of Helms's
political bombast, he should be remembered first as a
considerate and compassionate person.
''He stood by the
things that he believed in, and the incredible thing
[that] was so wonderful about him is that he never, whether
you agreed with him or not on issues, it never
affected his personal relationship with you,'' Cobey
said. ''He believed he had a right to stand for what he
believed in, and he believed you did too.''
As a politician,
Helms never lost a race for the Senate -- but never won
by much either. He won the 1972 election after switching
parties and defeated then-governor Jim Hunt in an epic
battle in 1984 in what was then the costliest Senate
race on record. In his last two runs for Senate, he
defeated black former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990
and 1996 by running racially tinged campaigns.
In the first
race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumpling up a
job application, these words underneath: ''You needed that
job ... but they had to give it to a minority.''
''He'll be
remembered in part for the strong racist streak that
articulated his politics and almost all of his political
campaigns -- they were racialized in the most negative
ways,'' said Kerry Haynie, a political science
professor at Duke University, who noted that unlike
George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, Helms never repented for
such tactics.
''He was sort of
unrepentant until the end,'' Haynie said.
Helms at times
played a pivotal role in national GOP politics --
supporting Ronald Reagan in 1976 in a presidential primary
challenge to then-president Ford. Reagan's candidacy
was near collapse when it came time for the North
Carolina primary. Helms was in charge of the effort,
and Reagan won a startling upset that resurrected his
challenge.
''It's not saying
too much to say that had Senator Helms not put his
weight and his political organization behind Ronald Reagan
so that he was able to win North Carolina, there may
have never been a Reagan presidency,'' Cobey said.
''Most people feel like there would have never been a
President Reagan had it not been for Jesse Helms.''
Still, even some
Republicans cringed when Helms said Clinton -- whom he
deemed unqualified to be commander in chief -- was so
unpopular he would need a bodyguard on North Carolina
military bases. Helms said he hadn't meant it as a
threat.
As he aged, Helms
was slowed by a variety of illnesses, including a bone
disorder, prostate cancer, and heart problems, and he made
his way through the Capitol on a motorized scooter as
his career neared an end. In April 2006 his family
announced he had been moved into a convalescent center
after being diagnosed with vascular dementia, in which
repeated minor strokes damage the brain.
Helms's public
appearances dwindled as his health deteriorated. When his
memoirs were published in August 2005, he appeared at a
Raleigh bookstore to sign copies but did not speak.
In an e-mail
interview with the Associated Press at that time, Helms said
he hoped what future generations learn about him ''will be
based on the truth and not the deliberate inaccuracies
those who disagreed with me took such delight in
repeating.''
''My legacy will
be up to others to describe,'' he added. (Whitney
Woodward, AP)
