Saturday, July 5, 2008
Ex-Sen. Helms, icon of right, dies at 86
Former Sen. Jesse Helms, the polarizing North Carolina Republican who was an icon to conservatives and a demon to liberals, died early Friday in Raleigh, N.C. He was 86.
Mr. Helms served five terms in the Senate, from 1973 to 2003. After suffering poor health in recent years, he died of natural causes at a convalescent home. "He was very comfortable," said former chief of staff Jimmy Broughton.
"Jesse Helms was a kind, decent and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called 'the Miracle of America.' So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July," President Bush said in a statement. "He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: 'The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven.' Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race."
Mr. Helms and his wife, Dorothy, had two daughters and a son and seven grandchildren. Funeral services are planned for Tuesday in Raleigh.
The North Carolina senator was lionized Friday by conservatives for helping revitalize the Republican Party in the wake of the Watergate scandal and for his efforts against communism, particularly on behalf of Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, writer of "The Gulag Archipelago."
"Helms must be remembered as the man who brought Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to America in 1975 when the great dissident was reviled by the Soviets and shunned by Henry Kissinger, Gerald Ford and the rest of the liberal intelligentsia foreign-policy establishment," Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley said.
"Solzhenitsyn had too much sunlight on him for the Evil Empire to exterminate, as they had done with millions of other dissenters, so he was sent into exile," Mr. Shirley said. "But only two men welcomed him to America: Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagan."
From his spot as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Helms made anti-communism a career-defining priority.
"He was a pivotal leader in helping win the Cold War," said Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, which Mr. Helms created in 1974 to promote conservative priorities in the Senate.
Mr. Helms frequently railed against the Soviet Union, China and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. He opposed giving China "most-favored nation" trading status because of human rights violations, and a law bearing his name strengthened the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
"It's not inconceivable that some day Helms will be a folk hero in Cuba," Mark Falcoff, a Latin American specialist at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer for a 2001 profile.
"Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom," Mr. Bush said. "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."
For a 2005 profile in The Washington Times, Mr. Helms linked the two great causes of his Senate career: "We are better off with the defeat of communism. Imagine how much better off we will be when once again unborn children can be safe from the destruction of abortion."
In the 1970s, Mr. Helms played a critical role in rebranding the Republican Party as a coalition of economic conservatives, national-defense hawks and churchgoers concerned about social issues. The shift in the party was made evident with the 1980 election of Mr. Reagan, whose ascension came in no small part thanks to Mr. Helms.
In the 1976 Republican presidential-nomination fight, Mr. Helms and his state political organization helped Mr. Reagan score a key primary win in North Carolina. Though Mr. Reagan eventually lost the nomination to President Ford, his North Carolina victory proved to be a turning point.
"The folks in North Carolina helped get Ronald Reagan to the White House by giving him their votes in the 1976 presidential primary," Mr. Helms told The Times. "Winning that election kept Reagan in the race and positioned him for a successful campaign in 1980."
"Jesse may've been irascible and opinionated, but he deeply loved and definitely understood America," former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, the Libertarian candidate for president, told The Times. "Without his senatorial muscle, much of the agenda that Ronald Reagan was able to accomplish would not have happened."
While the Republican Party was changing, Mr. Helms built himself a reputation in the Senate as outspoken, if not outright confrontational.
His propensity to block legislation and appointments earned him the nickname "Senator No." It was meant as an insult, but Mr. Helms loved it.
"Compromise, hell!" Mr. Helms wrote in a 1959 editorial. "That's what has happened to us all down the line - and that's the very cause of our woes. 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?"
In a statement Friday, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. Delaware Democrat and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, did not downplay his differences with Mr. Helms, but praised him for how the two "worked together to reorganize our foreign-policy agencies and reform the United Nations."
"Even though he had a reputation of being 'Senator No,' he forged many pragmatic compromises for the good of the nation and the world. My thoughts and prayers are with the entire Helms family, especially his beloved wife Dot," Mr. Biden said.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Times: "Jesse Helms told me early in my career, 'Young man, remember Washington is a city in which the urgent drives out the important. Your job is to get up everyday and put the important at the center of your job - and keep it there as long as you can.'"
"Jesse lived by that rule," said the Georgian who led the 1994 Republican capture of Congress. "I have tried to follow it ever since."
Born Oct. 18, 1921, in Monroe, N.C., Jesse Alexander Helms described his childhood as idyllic in writings from 1956.
"I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year's Eve firecrackers," he wrote.
After serving in the Navy during World War II, Mr. Helms worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, but it was his work as a TV and radio commentator that made him famous in North Carolina. He was a pioneer of conservative broadcasting that since has flourished with Rush Limbaugh and other talk-radio pundits.
His first foray into politics came while working on the successful 1950 Senate campaign of Willis Smith, a Democrat, in a contest involving race-based attacks. Mr. Helms defended segregation throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
In response to a criticisms that a fictional black character in his newspaper column was offensive, Mr. Helms wrote in 1956: "To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing."
To his critics, Mr. Helms was a bigot and racist, even on the day of his death, with the Rev. Jesse Jackson saying Friday that "at the height of his power, he fought for the values of the old Confederacy. He resisted the new South. He resisted the opportunity to fight for a more perfect union."
Mr. Helms drew the ire of his Senate colleagues in 1983 when he opposed creating a national holiday for Martin Luther King. He accused King of Marxist sympathies and said the holiday would be costly for the economy.
According to The Washington Post, "When asked if his attack on King would cause political trouble in North Carolina, where he faces a tough race for re-election next year, Helms said bluntly, 'I'm not going to get any black votes, period.' "
Mr. Helms was similarly denounced as "homophobic" for opposing funding for AIDS research, and for blaming the spread of the disease on gays, whom he described as "unnatural" and "disgusting,"
In response to a letter from a woman whose son had died of AIDS, Mr. Helms wrote back: "I know that Mark's death was devastating to you. I wish he had not played Russian roulette with his sexual activity. I have sympathy for him - and for you. But there is no escaping the reality of what happened."
In his last year in office, Mr. Helms said he had been wrong to oppose funding for AIDS. Mr. Helms suggested that the change in position was influenced by his friendship with Bono, the lead singer of the rock band U2. The two had struck up an unlikely friendship after the Irish singer visited Mr. Helms in 2000 to talk about debt relief for poor nations.
On Friday, Brent Childers, executive director of the pro-gay group Faith in America, said that "inflicting harm on others in the name of religion is at the heart of Helms' dark legacy."
The depth of hostility that some on the left had for Mr. Helms - some liberal Web sites were openly gleeful Friday - was appalling, Mr. Shirley said.
"In the 1980s, radical feminists produced buttons and bumper stickers that depicted coat hangers and proclaimed, 'Abort Jesse,' " Mr. Shirley noted. "If that is not wishing for someone's death, I don't know what is."
But to conservative supporters, such as Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly, Mr. Helms' legacy is far different: "Oh, how we will miss Jesse Helms every time a United Nations treaty or an undeserving nominee surfaces in the Senate."
cStephen Dinan and Jon Ward contributed to this report.