JESSE HELMS, RIP

There was a side to Jesse Helms the media won't report.

As a young Senatorial aide I would ride back and forth from the Senate Office Buildings to the Capitol on a small train. One double car was reserved for Senators, the rest were first-come first-serve for staff and the public.

One day after a Senate vote I was heading back to the office, but the cars for staff were full. Normally, I would have to wait until the train returned to catch a ride. The cars reserved for Senators was not full and Senator Helms said, "Come on in, you can ride with me." As we entered the Dirksen Senate Office Bldg., there were two sets of elevators, one reserved for Senators and one for the public. There was a large crowd and line in front of the public elevator, so Senator Helms grabbed my arm and said, "You can ride up with me." Both of these thoughtful and gracious acts were not typical of the Senators I had been exposed to.

I also recall an incident in a room just off the Senate Chamber. One liberal Senator was upset with some amendment Helms had offered. He told Helms, "I'll bet you think you can walk on water." Helms replied, "I can" and the bet was on. Helms then filled a paper cup from the water cooler, poured it on the carpet, and walked on it.

No matter his sometimes controversial stands, Jesse Helms was an exception in the Senate - an exception because he was a true gentleman with a friendly and humble demeanor.


Helms, North Carolina's Former `Senator No,' Dies

By Jim O'Connell and Gopal Ratnam

July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Jesse Helms, the former five-term U.S. senator from North Carolina whose relish for thwarting initiatives he opposed as too liberal earned him the nickname ``Senator No,'' died at age 86.

As a Republican member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the conservative senator was best known for pushing to withhold U.S. dues owed to the United Nations, opposing the 1977 treaty that ceded U.S. control of the Panama Canal, and backing policies aimed at isolating Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Helms tried in 1983 to filibuster legislation to make Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. He also gave fits to both Republican and Democratic presidents by using parliamentary tactics to block administration nominees he opposed. In 1997, he thwarted Massachusetts Governor William Weld's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico, saying Weld, a Republican, was a bad choice because he backed the medical use of marijuana.

``Somebody said, `Jesse, why do you so often advance things or take positions that you know you don't have any chance to win?''' Helms told reporters in 2002. ``And my answer to that is, I do it on principle.''

Helms died at 1:18 a.m. today in Raleigh, said John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center Foundation in Wingate, North Carolina, in a phone interview today. The cause of death has yet to be determined, he said.

Presidential Condolences

President George W. Bush, in a statement, expressed his condolences for the family and called the conservative icon ``a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty.

``So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July,'' America's Independence Day, Bush said.

Helms was ``a leading voice and courageous champion for many causes he believed in,'' said Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, in a statement. ``Today we lost a senator whose stature in Congress had few equals.''

While Helms embraced the nickname ``Senator No,'' in many ways ``he was a visionary,'' Dodd said.

``He was talking about Social Security reform in the early 1980s and private accounts to supplement it, and talked about reforming the State Department, which is one of the things he got done, and talked about holding the United Nations accountable,'' Dodd said.

Helms also could change his mind, as he did on AIDS, backing U.S. legislation to provide treatment for people with the disease in Africa, Dodd said. The singer Bono ``told me personally that Helms helped save hundreds of thousands of lives in Africa because of his change in position,'' Dodd said.

Heart Surgery, Cancer

Helms didn't seek another term in 2002, citing health problems. He had undergone heart-valve transplant surgery and survived prostate cancer and a knee replacement. Much of the last year of his term was spent in the hospital, and during his appearances in the Senate he used a motorized scooter to make his way around.

His 30 years in office made him North Carolina's longest- serving senator.

``My friend and long-time senator from my home state'' was a man ``of consistent conviction to conservative ideals'' who served ``on principle, not popularity or politics,'' said the Reverend Billy Graham, the Christian evangelist, in a statement released on PR Newswire.

Conservative `Icon'

When Helms announced his decision not to seek re-election, the Boston Globe called him ``an unyielding icon of conservatives and an archenemy of liberals.''

Washington Post political writer and columnist David Broder wrote in 2001 that Helms was ``the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country.''

In his 1990 re-election bid, facing Democrat Harvey Gantt, a black man who was mayor of Charlotte, Helms broadcast a television advertisement that showed a pair of white hands crumpling a rejection letter while the announcer said, ``You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota.''

In 1994 he caused an uproar when he told a newspaper that President Bill Clinton ``better have a bodyguard'' if he ever visited North Carolina.

Helms was born Oct. 18, 1921, in Monroe, North Carolina, a rural community outside of Charlotte. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and after the war was a reporter and city editor of The Raleigh (North Carolina) Times.

He started in politics as a Democrat at a time when the party drew its strength in the South. Helms served as an administrative assistant to two Democratic U.S. senators from North Carolina in the 1950s. From 1953 to 1960, he was executive director of the North Carolina Bankers Association.

TV, Radio

From 1960 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 1972 Helms wrote and presented daily editorials on WRAL-TV in Raleigh and on a radio network. He also served as executive vice president of the Capitol Broadcasting Co. in Raleigh.

He switched party affiliation in 1970, drawing support from free-market conservatives, foes of federally mandated racial desegregation and Christian evangelicals. A similar coalition was behind the shift that led the South to go from solidly Democratic to Republican.

Helms's stances on contentious social issues made him a frequent target of critics from the Democratic Party and made many of his election campaigns into close races. In 1984, when Republican President Ronald Reagan won North Carolina with 62 percent of the vote, Helms won with 52 percent.

Historic Company

``You may not have agreed with his politics all the time, but he was a gentleman about it,'' Bush said in 2001 when Helms announced he wouldn't seek another term in office.

Helms had lived in a nursing home since May 2006 and suffered from dementia, a spokesman said. He is survived by his wife Dorothy and three children.

Helms's death on July 4 puts him in the historic company of John Adams, the second U.S. president, and Thomas Jefferson, the third president, both of whom died on July 4, 1826, and James Monroe, the fifth president, who died July 4, 1831.