[Deathwatch] Jesse Helms, former senator, 86

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Former Republican Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86

By WHITNEY WOODWARD

Former Sen. 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, Communists
and occasionally a fellow Republican, died on the Fourth of July. He
was 86.

"It's just incredible that he would die on July 4th, 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.

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' longtime church in
Raleigh.

The son of a police chief, North Carolina voters first learned of Helms
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
homosexual 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 Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who won Helms' 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 frontman 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, 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
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 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 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' 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-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. 

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary