RALEIGH, N.C. — Jesse Helms forever changed the conservative movement, and the former North Carolina senator did it without ever changing much about himself.
There is perhaps no better example of Helms’ unwavering commitment to his beliefs than on the issue of race. Helms was a staunch opponent of the civil rights movement, where he joined Alabama Gov. George Wallace and South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond in a fight to keep outsiders from meddling in what he called “the Southern way of life.”
But those two giants of Southern politics came to temper their views on race and civil rights, while Helms never did. He died Friday at age 86, having never seen any need to apologize or deviate from his views.
“I can’t think of many other examples of major opponents of the civil rights movement that didn’t modify their view on civil rights,” said William Link, a professor at the University of Florida and a Helms biographer. “He was very much a man of the times and his generation . . . of North Carolina whites (who) grew up with segregation.”
Helms’ take-no-prisoners brand of politics, combined with a strict stubbornness on social issues and a fiery desire to defeat Communism, endeared him to conservatives. His defiance of the establishment, combined with a political machine that refined the art of direct-mail fundraising, helped Helms transform North Carolina into a two-party state and turn the South into a Republican stronghold.
His greatest political accomplishment came in a year when his name didn’t even appear on the ballot. Helms’ decision to back Ronald Reagan’s upstart bid against President Gerald Ford in 1976 led the struggling California governor to an upset win in the North Carolina primary, setting the stage for his eventual White House win four years later.
“In one sense, the role that Jesse played in that one primary 32 years ago was key to electing a president — which was key to Reagan, which was key to America winning the Cold War,” said Carter Wrenn, a longtime political operative in the Helms machine.
Throughout his five terms in the Senate, Helms took offense at accusations he was racist. He spoke often of his good relationships with blacks and pointed to the black members on his staff. He insisted he opposed the Civil Rights Act because he didn’t want the federal government intervening in state matters. He considered the civil rights movement to be either corrupt or self-serving, Link said.
“I felt that the citizens of my community, my state and my region of the country were being battered by this new form of bigotry,” Helms wrote in his 2005 memoir, “Here’s Where I Stand.”
Helms didn’t worry much about what others viewed as race-baiting, mostly because every six years he proved he didn’t need to change his ways to keep getting elected. He never won more than 55 percent of the vote, but his coalition of Republicans and so-called “Jessecrats” — conservative, white Democrats who voted for the GOP in federal elections — kept sending him back to Washington.
