Elected 1972, seat up 2002 Born: Oct. 18, 1921, Monroe Home: Raleigh Education: Wingate Col., Wake Forest U. Religion: Baptist Marital Status: married (Dorothy)

Career:

• Political: Raleigh City Cncl., 1957-61.
• Professional: City Editor, Raleigh Times; A.A., U.S. Sen. Willis Smith, 1951-53; A.A., U.S. Sen. Alton Lennon, 1953; Exec. Dir., NC Bankers Assn., 1953-60; Exec. V.P., WRAL-TV & Tobacco Radio Network, 1960-72.
• Military: Navy, 1942-45 (World War II).

DC Office: 403 DSOB 20510, 202-224-6342; Fax: 202-228-1339; Web site: www.senate.gov/~helms

State Offices: Hickory, 828-322-5170; Raleigh,919-856-4630.

Committees:

• Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry: Marketing, Inspection & Product Promotion; Production & Price Competitiveness; Research, Nutrition & General Legislation.
• Foreign Relations (RMM): East Asian & Pacific Affairs; International Operations & Terrorism; Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps, Narcotics Affairs.
• Rules & Administration.

No American politician is more controversial, beloved in some quarters and hated in others, than Jesse Helms, now finishing his fifth term in the Senate. Helms grew up the son of the police chief of Monroe, North Carolina, 15 miles from the birthplace of Andrew Jackson--a breeding ground, it seems, for true-believing, contentious leaders. With Jacksonian tenacity he has stuck to his early convictions--respect for elders and law and order, traditional religious faith and moral principles, patriotism, the order imposed by racial segregation--with the exception of the last, and his abandonment of it in earlier years seemed grudging and halfhearted. Helms has always seemed more an advocate than a doer, yet he has had a considerable effect on events over the years, and has become a major force, respected internationally perhaps even more than at home, in shaping American foreign policy. If he has not restored America to the state of the Monroe of his youth, he has succeeded in moving the country in a different direction from what his liberal critics optimistically and he pessimistically believed was inevitable 30 years ago. And he has done so with little or no surrender of principle; as Fred Barnes wrote in The Weekly Standard, "Helms follows a simple formula: Implacability equals strength. It works. He can't be buffaloed--or ignored. … The point here is Helms has gained strange, new respect not as many conservatives have--by moving left. Helms has earned it the hard way--by not moving at all."

Helms attended Wingate College and Wake Forest but did not graduate. He served in the Navy in World War II and became a journalist in Raleigh, worked for two U.S. senators from 1951-53, headed the state Banker's Association, served on the Raleigh Council and from 1960-72 was a commentator on Raleigh TV and the Tobacco Radio Network. So he was a familiar voice and a seasoned political operator when he ran for the Senate in 1972, and upset a moderate Democrat 54%-46%. Helms made then and makes now no attempt to win over everyone; he has a solidly conservative voting record, and can state his views pungently. He has had vigorous opposition every time he has run for reelection and his percentages have been in a narrow range: 54%, 55%, 52%, 53%, 53%.

In his first 20 years in the Senate, Helms--nicknamed Senator No--was mostly in the posture of opposition; since the mid-1990s he has been pursuing his own reform policies, with some success. He has long served on the Agriculture Committee, and chaired it in the 1980s; he supported tobacco programs there, but had to be bailed out of difficulties managing farm bills in the 1980s by Bob Dole. Helms was happier obtaining roll call votes on cultural issues: abortion and the fetal tissue research ban, school busing, Japanese American redress, AIDS funding, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has been a strong supporter of the anti-flag-burning and school-prayer amendments.

Helms has used his seat on Foreign Relations to conduct something like his own foreign policy. His great cause in the 1970s was to defeat the Panama Canal treaties--a cause which helped defeat a dozen liberal senators and kept alive Ronald Reagan's candidacy when it threatened to die prior to the North Carolina primary in 1976. In the Reagan and Bush years, Helms and aides James Lucier, Christopher Manion and Deborah DeMoss developed their own sources and influenced State Department appointments to help the Contras in Nicaragua and rightists in El Salvador. Helms promised not to take the Foreign Relations chairmanship in his 1984 campaign, and in 1985 and 1986 the committee was chaired by Richard Lugar. But after Republicans lost their majority in 1986, Helms did not feel bound by his promise not to seek the ranking minority position, and citing his greater seniority beat Lugar in the Republican Conference. That put him in position to become chairman when Republicans won back the majority in 1994.

As chairman, Helms did not always prevail, but was a force to reckon with. He favored lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia; he opposed the U.S. military intervention in Haiti; he opposed the use of U.S. troops as peacekeeping forces in the Golan Heights; he was leery of the U.S. agreement with North Korea. Helms had some notable achievements. One was passage of the Helms-Burton Act after Fidel Castro's air force shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes in February 1996; it codified the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba and allowed lawsuits against foreign companies who benefited from American property expropriated by Castro's Communist dictatorship. Helms was pleased to see Madeleine Albright, then ambassador to the United Nations, denounce the plane attack as "cowardice" and, later in the year, maneuver to block Boutros Boutros-Ghali from a second term as UN secretary general. Helms welcomed her appointment as secretary of State and on a trip to North Carolina in March 1997 she presented him with a T-shirt ("Someone in the State Department Loves Me") and he gave her some barbecue for the flight home.

Another Helms achievement was reorganization of the State Department. In 1995, after the Clinton White House rejected Secretary of State Warren Christopher's proposal to reorganize foreign policy agencies, Helms presented a similar plan of his own, holding up 18 ambassador nominations and approval of the START II and Chemical Weapons treaties; he ultimately passed $1.7 billion in spending cuts from State Department agencies over five years. Clinton vetoed the reorganization, but Helms persevered. Working with Democrat Joseph Biden, Helms ultimately prevailed, and in October 1998 the Arms Control Disarmament Agency and U.S. Information Agency were abolished and their functions were folded into the State Department. Under the reorganization plan, the U.S. Agency for International Development remained an independent agency, but its administrator started reporting to the secretary of State.

Helms has used the Senate's confirmation power to block appointments. In 1995 he vetoed Robert Pastor, a former Carter administration Latin American expert, as ambassador to Panama. In 1997 he balked at the nomination of Massachusetts Governor William Weld to be ambassador to Mexico. Helms complained that Weld supported medical marijuana and had a poor record of drug prosecutions as a U.S. attorney in the 1980s. He may also have minded that Weld, during his unsuccessful campaign for the Senate in 1996, declined to say he would vote for Helms for Foreign Relations chairman. Helms refused to allow the nomination to go forward, and Weld, who had resigned as governor, dropped out. In 1999 Helms opposed the nomination of former Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, who had met with Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, to be ambassador to New Zealand; senatorial courtesy gave her overwhelming support, and he let the nomination come to the floor where it was approved 96-2. In 2000 he opposed the nomination of Larry Pope to be ambassador to Kuwait; as an aide to the Central Command, Pope had not supported the Iraqi liberation force which the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 encouraged. Helms opposed Clinton judicial appointees to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, although North Carolina has no judges there, citing the circuit's chief judge who has said that new appointees are not needed; critics have fastened onto the fact that two Clinton appointees are black.

Many criticize Helms' use of the confirmation process as mischievous. But it has sometimes had positive results. In 1999 Helms held up the confirmation of Richard Holbrooke as ambassador to the United Nations until he received commitments on the sticky issue of the United States' UN dues--and until Holbrooke acknowledged that he had violated federal lobbying laws in 1996. The dues had long been in arrears, and Helms, along with Biden, opposed payment until the UN reformed its huge and inefficient bureaucracy and until the U.S. share of total dues was reduced. Holbrooke vowed to negotiate such an agreement. These two unlikely partners worked closely together. Holbrooke arranged for Helms to speak to the UN Security Council in January 2000. Helms' message was blunt: "A United Nations that seeks to impose its presumed authority on the American people, without their consent, begs for confrontation and--I want to be candid with you--eventual U.S. withdrawal." But he also spoke directly with each member's representative, and hosted the Security Council to a meeting in the Capitol in March 2000. Holbrooke eventually secured an agreement that called for the U.S. to pay $926 million in back dues while reducing the U.S. share of the UN administrative budget from 25% to 22% and of UN peacekeeping forces from 31% to 26%. Helms accepted the agreement and praised Holbrooke; Biden, in an unusual tribute, hailed Helms for keeping his word and solving a long-festering problem.

The Foreign Relations Committee's power to send treaties to the floor, or not, has been used by Helms to help determine U.S. policy. He hailed the Clinton administration for its refusal to endorse the land mines treaty in September 1997. His opposition to the International Criminal Court treaty, negotiated but not endorsed by Clinton in 1998, has kept it a dead letter; in 2000 Helms sponsored a bill to bar U.S. cooperation with such a tribunal which, in his view, could subject U.S. military personnel to prosecution. In April 2000, six weeks before a Clinton visit to Russia, Helms promised to block approval of any arms control agreements negotiated by the lame duck president. Helms supported some Clinton initiatives, including the December 1998 air strikes against Iraq launched when Clinton faced the impeachment vote, and the spring 1999 bombing campaign against Serbia; but in each case he pressed for sponsoring democratic change, which came in Serbia but not Iraq. He opposed permanent normal trade relations with China, and with liberal Democrat Paul Wellstone (who on becoming a senator said that he "detested" Helms) sponsored a series of amendments to highlight China's suppression of human rights. He called for an investigation of Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos when Angelos refused to hire baseball players who had fled Communist Cuba. He wants to funnel all U.S. foreign aid not through government but through private charities such as World Vision, Save the Children, Hadassa, Catholic Relief Services and Samaritan's Purse.

Helms has taken an insouciant attitude toward winning re-election. The 1984 contest between Helms and Jim Hunt was the most expensive Senate race in history then. In 1990 and 1996 Helms faced Harvey Gantt, former mayor of Charlotte and who in his youth had, amid much publicity and no little danger, desegregated Clemson University. The 1990 race was especially closely fought and closely watched. Gantt did a fine job of framing the issues, dismissing Helms' preoccupation with the NEA and abortion as unimportant. But Helms, armed with money raised by a nationwide direct mail campaign, ran ads attacking racial quotas and accusing Gantt of taking financial advantage of a law providing for racial preference in broadcast licenses. Gantt fell in the polls and Helms won 53%-47%. In 1996 Helms ran a sort of stealth campaign, refusing to debate, not announcing his public schedule and communicating with the press mostly by fax. He won 53%-46%, in a near carbon copy of the 1990 results; Gantt--in an interesting note for those who insist that whites won't vote for blacks--ran ahead of Bill Clinton.

Will Helms run again in 2002, when he turns 81? Washington reporters have focused on his health: He has had double knee replacement surgery, suffered from Paget's bone disease in his hip and has peripheral neuropathy, a loss of sensation in his feet, which impairs his balance and requires him to ride a motorized scooter. But he still has plenty of energy and determination. Few Democrats seem eager to run against him, though many might run for an open seat; names mentioned include Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, former state House Speaker Dan Blue, Richard Vinroot and Congressman Bob Etheridge. On the Republican side, Congressman Richard Burr has been traveling the state and seems likely to run, but only if Helms retires. Other possible Republican candidates include House members Robin Hayes, Sue Myrick and Walter Jones Jr.

Cook's Call:
Competitive. It isn't clear whether Republicans are better off with or without Helms, who may, or may not, retire. In all likelihood there will be a competitive contest with the potential to be one of the top races in the country.

Update: February 25, 2002
On August 22, Helms announced that he would retire from the Senate when his term ends in 2002. Even before that announcement was made formally, Republican leaders had begun courting former American Red Cross president and 2000 presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole as a contender for Helms' seat. Dole is a native of Salisbury, N.C., but has lived in Washington with her husband, former Senator Bob Dole, for many years. Her popularity in North Carolina has not yet been tested, but Dole is well known nationally. She is a moderate, but has been received favorably by conservatives in the state who want the Republican Party to retain Helms' seat. Asked about Dole's candidacy and moderate ideology, the conservative Helms said, "I know she is a perfectly honest lady."

Dole was originally expected to announce her candidacy on September 11, the day of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. She postponed her announcement, and on September 22 her spokesman said she had officially joined the race. Other Republicans who have announced they will seek the nomination include former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot -- who announced he would run for Helms' seat the day after Helms announced his retirement -- and retired physician Ada Fisher. Attorney Jim Snyder has formed an exploratory committee but has not made a formal announcement.

Potential Democratic challengers include Secretary of State Elaine Marshall, who has announced she will run, and state Representative Dan Blue, who has filed candidacy papers but not made a formal announcement.