[RIP] Jesse Helms

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5871793.html

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Jesse Helms-- all died on July Fourth...

July 4, 2008, 6:52PM
Former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86

By WHITNEY WOODWARD
Associated Press

JESSE HELMS DIES

NAME — Jesse Alexander Helms.

AGE — Born Oct.18, 1921 in Monroe, N.C.

EDUCATION — Monroe public schools; Wingate Junior College and Wake Forest College.

FAMILY — Wife, Dorothy Coble Helms; children Jane Knox, Nancy Grigg and Charles Helms; seven grandchildren.

CAREER — Navy, 1942-1945; city editor at The Raleigh Times; administrative assistant to Democratic Sens. Willis Smith (1951-53) and Alton Lennon (1953); executive director of the North Carolina Bankers Association from 1953-1960; executive vice president of Capitol Broadcasting Co., 1960-1972.

POLITICAL CAREER — Elected Republican senator from North Carolina in 1972; re-elected to Senate four times; in 1984, defeated then-Gov. Jim Hunt in what was then the costliest Senate race on record; served as chairman of Senate Foreign Relations and Agriculture Committees; earned nickname "Senator No" for no-compromise political style; forced roll-call votes requiring Democrats to take politically difficult votes on art he deemed pornographic, school busing, flag burning, other issues.

RALEIGH, N.C. — When telling stories about Jesse Helms after his death on the Fourth of July, the politician who took his place in Congress recalled how the iconic North Carolina senator liked to invite pages to sit down and chat over ice cream.

"Can you imagine how excited these young people would be, sitting and having ice cream with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?" asked Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

Other stories weren't as sweet.

Helms opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a commentator and voted against its reauthorization once in the Senate. He notoriously registered his disgust in 1993 when President Clinton nominated an openly homosexual woman to serve at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," Helms said at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."

"I wish, as do many people, that he would have used his strength and power to work for the civil rights movement, instead of against it — what a legacy that would have been," said the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP.

In the hours after Helms died early Friday at the age of 86, having spent the past few years out of the spotlight while in declining health at a Raleigh convalescent home, he was remembered by some as a patriot. Many noted with reverence that he died on the Fourth of July, as did Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and praised his legacy as an unyielding conservative champion.

"I certainly can't help but think the Lord made it happen that way," said his longtime political strategist, Tom Ellis. "We know, at least conservatives know, what that meant to the cause."

But there were also reminders that Helms was the often caustic "Senator No," a man who in three decades in the Senate 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.

"He was a master at manipulating the politics of fear to his advantage, quite skillfully," said Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University.

Funeral services are planned for Tuesday at Helms' longtime church in Raleigh.

North Carolina voters first learned of Helms in the 1950s and 60s through his newspaper and television commentaries, and he would grow to become an iconic figure of the South who let nothing silence the trumpet of his beliefs. The son of a police chief whose first job was as a sportswriter, he won election to the Senate in 1972 and rose to become a powerful committee chairman before retiring in 2002.

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.

"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. But he 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 frontman Bono.

But while the rocker was able to work with Helms, others could not look past years of speech they considered nothing less than cruel.

"Jesse Helms' legacy is one of hatred, homophobia and racism," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Washington-based Human Rights Campaign. "Although not its intent, that legacy has made our community stronger and more able to forcefully respond to bigotry and prejudice."

Helms served as chairman of the Agriculture and Foreign Relations committees at times when the GOP held the Senate majority, and he used the posts to protect his state's tobacco growers and other farmers and place 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."

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 Sept. 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 on Oct. 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 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' 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," said former North Carolina GOP Rep. Bill Cobey.

"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-Gov. 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' public appearances dwindled as his health deteriorated. When his memoirs were published in August 2005, he appeared at a Raleigh book store 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.

 

I thought a little humor should be injected because I knew there would be tension mounting when asked to say something nice about such a terribly flawed man!