Professor Gottfried,
Thank you for the kind comment and your knowledgeable perspective.

I suspect, that like most other under-40 readers, my knowledge of Helms’s 1984 and 1990 re-election campaigns is limited to second hand accounts.

I have, however, read “Here’s Where I Stand” and a number of Helm’s speeches. I also had the privilege of meeting the senator in 1996 and found him to be a gracious gentleman. That is far more than I can say for many other elected officials, who viewed interns or other member’s constitients as pests.

Politicians are a reflection of their constituents (however dim). When the people of Northe Carolina were Democratic segregationsits, so was Sen. Helms. When they mutated into Dispensationalist Republicans , so did Sen. Helms. Without such a mutation, he would not have been Sen. Helms but just another editorial writer (Pat Buchanan could sympathize - the Republicans have moved on and left him at the station).

Bill Bennett was sent to North Carolina to campaign for Helms

That must’ve been what put him over the top!

Paul,
I think your analysis has much merit. 1990 was the last time that the Congressional Club
(the political organization set up by Tom Ellis and then directed by Carter Wrenn) really managed
a Helms campaign. Even by that time certain neo-conservative types had decided to back
him. There was also, later, a change-over in the senator’s D.C. office and also at the
Helms Center (Wingate University). The late James McClellan (a staunch paleo) had been the director, and
he was replaced, with the newer leadership much more in line with a neo-conservative view
of things. Earlier I had even discussed with Jim maybe trying to get Mel Bradford to leave Dallas
and come to the Center....alas, it was not to be.

I had always heard that former Senator Chick Hecht (R-Nevada) was the point-man in winning
Jesse over to a strong pro-Israeli viewpoint. Earlier, along with Senator Allen of Alabama,
who had been his mentor when he first went to Washington, he had opposed too close an
embrace of Israeli policies. We all noticed the change when it occurred. It seemed
also to dovetail with the growth of what I might call “political Evangelicalism.”

I don’ think, however, that Jesse’s conversion, if we can call it that, was out of
expediency. Rather, I think he actually was convinced of the rightness and truthfulness
of that view. In this, he was not unlike other latter-day Southern conservative Protestants.

What is, however, interesting is that at least prior to the campaign of 1990 (even a bit
afterwards), I never saw any of that really emphasized here in North Carolina, and most
certainly not by Jesse’s old political organization, the Congressional Club. Indeed, the
Club did NOT support Robertson in 1988, and by 1992, without Jesse’s involvement in and
with it, it had ceased to exist. By then his D.C. office and his future (1996) campaign
were more dominated by more “mainstream” GOP operatives, and an AIPAC-approved Middle East
policy was pretty much in place, at least as a template.

The classic Helms campaigns---"pure Helms” if we might call it that---were 1972, and more
especially 1978 and 1984 (against Governor Jim Hunt). Those efforts were largely master-
minded by political geniuses, Carter Wrenn and Tom Ellis.  Of Carter Wrenn
it will be said by future historians, that he helped create the modern PR, total TV campaign.
He is a close friend, and more than once has said: “What we did [with the PR] was
to unleash a terrifying, impersonal ingredient in modern political campaigns. I have mixed feelings
about it, as it certainly has not been a really good thing for the republic. But, in the end,
if we had not perfected it, someone else would have.”

Through all the changes, Jesse remained Jesse, at least until the last couple of years of
his last term, when the personal touches, the personal notes and letters, the unsuspected
phone calls, and the surprize visits to constituents, etc. diminished as his health
also diminished. We still loved him, even if we strongly disagreed with him on, say, the Middle
East or perhaps something else. We still knew we could count on him, and that he really
did believe what he spoke.  That was enough, and remembering his first three terms and the
things he opposed and the things he championed, we might forgive him those later utterances.

One story I can recount: in 1991-92 I was the state chairman of the Buchanan campaign here
in NC, and I had arranged for Pat to fly directly to Raleigh for a campaign dinner right
after his New Hampshire announcement. We held the event at Balentine’s Cafeteria, and I had
alerted Senator Helms that Pat would be there (in a private room). Jesse and Mrs. Helms
actually ate dinner upstairs in the regular cafeteria. I had arranged for all the mainstream
media to have interviews with Pat, and save for a friendly reporter from the small-circulation
Salisbury Post, they had all left, when, suddenly, at the rear end of the meeting room, there
showed up Senator and Mrs. Helms! The crowd erupted in applause, and Pat approached from
one end of the hall to meet the Senator and his wife in the middle. The Salisbury Post
reporter was the only one to get the scoop (which later made the Washington Times, and
eventually other media). Jesse never endorsed a candidate that year, until the very end,
when it was all but over....I asked him once about that, and his reply: “Well, you know
I like Pat Buchanan a lot....”

Looking back on the whole thirty years in Congress, I think the judgment must be positive,
and Helms’ importance quite significant. They don’t make political leaders like him anymore;
he bridged an older world of personal and personable politics, and a newer one of created
TV personas. He did not know how to dissemble. He understood the meaning of the word
“service.” He believed that tax monies should never be wasted. He believed in a strict
reading of the Constitution. As one writer on this blog has written, perhaps it was a
bit of Southern “Whiggery.” Perhaps. But if so, it was so much more refreshing, so much
better than anything we’ve had since then, nationally or statewide. He will be missed.

Many of us noticed that the public image by the dominant media culture around Jesse Helms changed from very negative to moderately positive in and after 1996 with the passage of the Helms-Burton Act. This act was completely outside Helms’ usual pattern of legislation, and provides for lawsuits in American courts to seek recovery by persons of Cuban property claimed prior to the usurpation by Fidel Castro. One needs only a moment’s thought to decipher how helpful this will be to certain people when the Castro brothers have passed, and the current regime collapses. Watch for 800 lawsuits for recovery of property under the provisions of that law. It worked to put Helms on the side of the angels to the dominant media culture. Read a little bit about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms-Burton_Act

This was pretty much Helms’ thirty pieces of silver.

I learned a great deal from reading Ron’s comments about his meeting with the Senator
and even more from Boyd’s detailed discussion of the change in the attitudes and
demeanor of his longtime friend during his last two terms in the Senate. I knew
nothing about the influence exerted by Hecht, who seemed like a nice fellow but not
particularly articulate or well-educated. Perhaps I underestimated Hecht, who didn’t
stay around in the Senate more than one term after he came in with the Reagan landslide.
By the way, North Carolinians (if they still exist) are being
bombarded with Gantt proganda night and day, courtesy of Harvey’s daughter, who
bestrides the news channels.

Paul,
You met about half of the real North Carolinians when you were down here last year!!
Well, I do exaggerate a bit...but we are being overwhelmed, it seems, first by Northern
transplants who enjoy the warm climate and the low taxes, and now by “los hijos de la
Republica Mexicana.”

The real shame is WRAL-TV, the station where Jesse was once V-President and had a nightly
editorial (prior to his election to the Senate). It was eventually purchased by a “moderate”
Republican-type, who eschews conservative ideas, and embraces “p.c.” culture...alas.

Neoconservatives have always been good on affirmative action, which might seem out of character since they are normally hyper PC, but it is important to understand where this is coming from. Like the rest of the mainstream “right,” the neocons have staked out the territory of holier than thou “color-blindness,” which is essentially saying that they are even more purist egalitarians than are the affirmative action supporters and the multi-cults. With friends like these…