Tarheel Legend: Jesse Helms Profile

W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 21, 2001 -- In his nearly three decades in Congress, Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, a journalist-turned-politician, has built a well-earned reputation as one of the Senate's most conservative lawmakers.

The Republican was first elected to the Senate in 1972, and he quickly became known as an ideological purist.

Called "Senator No" by some, Helms has consistently argued against the United Nations, communism, government spending, welfare, arms control and foreign aid. He has at times been pro-military, and often derisive on topics and people he opposed, including Martin Luther King Jr. and homosexuality.

But Helms is also a courteous Southern gentleman. He rarely ducks from talking to reporters and once advised a young reporter navigating the marble floors of the Capitol to buy more comfortable shoes.

Anti-Government Philosophy

Railing against the reach of government has been a favorite cause for Helms, except on moral issues. In those cases, Helms believes government deserves to be a player.

"Big government cannot and will not solve the multitude of problems confronting our nation … because big government is the problem," he told the North Carolina General Assembly in 1997.

Helms has consistently won re-election by appealing to conservative, mostly white, rural North Carolinians. Throughout his service in public office, he has kept close ties to the religious right and made several appearances on the shows of televangelists Jim Bakker and Pat Robertson.

In 1982, Helms fell short of pushing through measures that would have stripped the Supreme Court jurisdiction over cases involving abortion, school prayer and school busing. He has voted to outlaw or restrict abortion and eliminate the use of busing for school integration. He also tried to do away with food stamps.

In 1989, Helms became embroiled in a national debate over homoerotic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano's photograph of a crucifix in a a glass of urine. Both were on display at an exhibit funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Helms tried without success to get Congress to pass a bill that banned federal funding for "obscene" art.

"The paramount thing is whether a man believes in the principles of America and whether he is willing to stand up for them, win or lose," Helms once said.

Journalist Turns to Politics

Jesse Helms was born Oct. 18, 1921, in Monroe, N.C. He went to public school and attended Wake Forest College before briefly working as a newspaper and radio journalist. In 1942, he entered the U.S. Navy and served during World War II.

After the war, Helms returned to radio work, held a directorship with the North Carolina Bankers Association and then returned to radio. In the 1960s, he developed a reputation as an outspoken critic of what he thought was unfair coverage of the South, particularly concerning the struggle over civil rights.

He used his position with the radio station as a forum to air his views on national and international issues. He became an outspoken critic of federal policies, including welfare, and often denounced judicial decisions in which he considered the punishment not suitable enough for the crime.

In 1972, Helms ran for the Senate and won by a large margin. He quickly established himself as one of the party's more solid conservatives and continued to win re-election after another.

He has not enjoyed widespread support in Congress, in part because of his tendency to overstep boundaries when speaking out on a subject. He was widely derided in 1994 when he called President Clinton an "incompetent commander" of the nation's armed forces. He also suggested that because of a disgruntled electorate, the president might need a bodyguard with him on visits to North Carolina.

But Helms has managed to have a major impact on U.S. foreign affairs, largely through his six-year chairmanship in the 1990s of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Helms opposes most internationalist efforts.

"Senator Helms not only speaks for the tens of millions of Americans who don't trust the foreign-policy establishment; he also opens the door to a true national consensus behind important foreign-policy goals," Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in The New York Times.