Columnist reflects on Helms' career

Jesse Helms was arguably the most influential North Carolina politician of the 20th century.

North Carolina was a one-party state when Helms was growing up, and he helped transform it by making it acceptable for conservative Democrats to vote Republican — hence the nickname of "Jessecrats" for Helms backers.

But more than that, Helms changed American history.

Helms and his political organization rescued Ronald Reagan's political career during the 1976 North Carolina Republican primary. Although Reagan did not win the nomination that year, it set him up to win the White House in 1980.

Along with Reagan, Barry Goldwater and Newt Gingrich, Helms was one of the key figures in the modern conservative movement — trying to roll back the Democratic New Deals and Great Societies, seeking to stiffen the country's spine against communism, and trying to return American life back to the 1950s in terms of race, gender and sexual orientation.

Helms helped re-engineer American politics. He created the so-called New Right, marrying social and religious conservatives with the older party of business. He pioneered the use of direct-mail and television, and he refined attack politics.

He had many virtues: He was honest, hardworking and unpretentious. He never forgot the people who put him in office. He could be charming, and if you asked him, I suspect he would give you the shirt off his back. And he had a surprising sense of humor.

There was also a dark side to Helms. He could be mean and narrow-minded, and I've seen him bully people.

I believe a man's strength is also his weakness. One of Helms' strengths was a firmness of purpose and deep convictions. As the old political mantra put it: You may not agree with Jesse, but at least you know where he stands.

But that was also his flaw. Many old segregationists apologized or evolved on race.

Not Helms. He didn't say anything that other Tar Heel politicians had not said many times before. The difference was that Helms kept saying them into the 1990s — a sort of walking sandwich board for racial insensitivity.

In the end, Helms' views on one of the great questions of his time — whether this was a democracy for all or for just some of us — put him on the wrong side of history.

My own relationship with Helms was a roller coaster. There were years when he refused to talk to me. His lieutenants once had me thrown out of the state Republican Convention. And Helms would sometimes denounce me from the podium at political rallies.

"That would be scary, if this crowd wasn't so damn old," a startled writer from The New Yorker magazine told me after Helms singled me out in a rally at a Goldsboro, N.C., tobacco warehouse.

But there were times when we got along tolerably well. And he was — as we say in the news business — good copy.

I last saw Helms nearly three years ago in one of his last public appearances. He was in Raleigh to mark the publication of his autobiography. His mind was fading. I wasn't sure whether he would even recognize me.

But at the end of the book signing, he motioned for me to come over.

"This is a sentimental time," Helms told me, speaking softly. "It's the end of it. I have thoroughly enjoyed my life in the public view."