Former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms, 86, of North Carolina dies
"Can you imagine how excited these young people would be, sitting and having ice cream with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?" asked Sen. Elizabeth Dole.
Other stories weren't as sweet.
Helms opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a commentator and voted against its reauthorization once in the Senate. He notoriously registered his disgust in 1993 when President Clinton nominated an openly homosexual woman to serve at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," Helms said at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."
"I wish, as do many people, that he would have used his strength and power to work for the civil rights movement, instead of against it — what a legacy that would have been," said the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP.
In the hours after Helms died early Friday at the age of 86, having spent the past few years out of the spotlight while in declining health at a Raleigh convalescent home, he was remembered by some as a patriot. Many noted with reverence that he died on the Fourth of July, as did Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and praised his legacy as an unyielding conservative champion.
But there were also reminders that Helms was the often caustic "Senator No," a man who in three decades in the Senate delighted in forcing roll-call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on federal funding for art he deemed pornographic, school busing, flag-burning and other cultural issues.
"He was a master at manipulating the politics of fear to his advantage, quite skillfully," said Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University.
Funeral services are planned for Tuesday at Helms' longtime church in Raleigh.
North Carolina voters first learned of Helms in the 1950s and 60s through his newspaper and television commentaries, and he would grow to become an iconic figure of the South who let nothing silence the trumpet of his beliefs. The son of a police chief whose first job was as a sportswriter, he won election to the Senate in 1972 and rose to become a powerful committee chairman before retiring in 2002.
His habit of blocking nominations and legislation during his first term led his former employer, The News & Observer of Raleigh, to nickname him "Senator No" — and Helms loved it. He was unafraid of inconveniencing his fellow senators, forcing filibusters before holidays and once objecting to a request by phoning in his dissent from home while watching Senate proceedings on television.
Recent comments
It isn't necessary to judge his heart. It only requires looking...
Anonymous | July 5, 2008 at 3:39 p.m.
Thanks for your kind and Christ-like judgment on those who disagree...
To: Anonymous at 10:02 | July 5, 2008 at 12:02 a.m.
Jesse Helms was the personification of ignorance combating education...
Anonymous | July 4, 2008 at 10:02 p.m.
