Jesse Helms’ death comes as no surprise, since his health had rapidly declined after he retired from the U.S. Senate in 2002. Yet it’s fitting that he died on the Fourth of July.
Helms was a disgrace to North Carolina and the nation, and what better time to celebrate our independence from the bigoted, hate-filled politics he stood for.
During Helms’ heyday, the question on many people’s minds about North Carolina was how could its citizens keep re-electing an extreme right wing, unrepentant segregationist, self-proclaimed "redneck" like Helms? The perception was that the state was filled with racists, or that Helms’ voters were ignorant and uneducated. The reality is more complex.
More below the fold.
From today's Huffington Post:
Helms was the dominant political figure in North Carolina from the early 1970’s until his retirement. For more then a decade before that, he had been the leading conservative voice in the state as a radio and television commentator for Raleigh's WRAL network.
After his election to the Senate in 1972, he started a political operation called the National Congressional Club that pioneered the use of direct mail fundraising techniques to build a nationwide base of fervent conservative supporters. In the process, Helms helped reinvigorate the national Republican party, laid groundwork for the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and became the far right's most infamous spokesman.
Helms urges Christians to get political in a 1980 promo spot for the Moral Majority
So how did he pull it off, winning five bare-knuckle U.S. Senate campaigns?
For one thing, he started in Tar Heel politics as a household name thanks to his decade-long career as a radio and TV commentator - the Rush Limbaugh of his day. Helms got lucky running for election in the GOP landslide years of 1972 and 1984, coasting on Nixon and Reagan’s coattails. He faced a black opponent twice at a time when no other African-Americans were in the Senate. His national fundraising operation ensured he would almost always have a financial advantage over his opponents. And Helms shrewdly made sure his office would be second to none when it came to constituent service, helping North Carolinians navigate the federal government bureaucracy. This last factor in particular won him many votes over the years.
But Helms did rely on hate-mongering to keep himself in power. He denounced Democrats, liberals and communists in virtually every breath, then went far beyond that. Helms’ vicious, bullying attacks on African-Americans, gays and lesbians, civil rights workers, the poor, and AIDS victims were legendary. His speeches, direct mail appeals, and campaign ads were a steady stream of bile.
Campaigning in Lenoir, NC, 1991
Helms poisoned the ideological well of North Carolina politics, and helped drag the entire country further to the right. Especially damning were Helms’ own words, his countless mean-spirited, prejudiced public statements for which he never apologized.
During the 1960’s, Helms ruled the North Carolina airwaves. As radio and TV news director at WRAL, his five-minute Viewpoint commentaries were broadcast twice a weekday at the end of the station’s morning and evening newscasts. They were rebroadcast on the 70 N.C. radio stations that made up WRAL’s "Tobacco Network," and published in newspapers across North Carolina and the South.
Helms delivered more than 2,700 Viewpoints from 1960-1972, all taking hard line stands against desegregation, busing, Vietnam War protests, and anything else progressive. He blamed the civil rights movement on outside agitators, accused Martin Luther King Jr. of being a communist, and called the 1964 Civil Rights Act "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."
The full story continues at HuffPo.
In the end, North Carolina found enough reasons to keep Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate for three decades. We may be rid of Helms, but his toxic legacy won’t soon be forgotten.