When columnist Bill Buckley died last week, he was described as the father of the modern conservative movement in America.

That got me thinking. Who is the father of the modern conservative movement in North Carolina? Here are my three nominations:

* Josiah Bailey of Raleigh, a senator from 1931 to 1946, was a leading critic of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. He was the principal author of the 10-point Conservative Manifesto, drafted in 1937, which called for lower taxes and less government, denounced strikes, demanded lower federal wages, defended states' rights and warned of the dangers of creating a permanent welfare state. The manifesto was reprinted by hundreds of chambers of commerce and other groups, and by 1938 there were 2 million copies in circulation.

This took some guts because the liberal FDR was highly popular in North Carolina, which he carried four times with 69 to 77 percent of the vote.

"The manifesto," writes historian David Kennedy, "constituted a kind of founding charter for modern American conservatism. It was among the first systematic expressions of an anti-government political philosophy that had deep roots in American political culture but only an inchoate existence before the New Deal."

* Sam Ervin Jr., a senator from 1954 to 1974, became the hero to many liberals because of his investigation of Watergate and because he often championed constitutional rights and civil liberties. But Ervin was better known as one of the leading conservative voices in Washington on most issues.

Ervin was the leading legal Southern strategist against civil rights legislation. He played a major role in crafting the Southern Manifesto, a statement signed by 101 Southern elected officials opposing the Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Eduction, which declared school segregation unconstitutional.

* Jesse Helms, who was senator from 1973 to 2003, greatly admired Ervin and was a poker-playing buddy of Bailey's son, Superior Court Judge Pou Bailey. Helms also received help from Sen. John Buckley, Bill's brother, when he was elected to the Senate in 1972.

Helms saved Ronald Reagan's career in the 1976 North Carolina presidential primary, built the movement of social conservatives that came to be known as The New Right and helped make North Carolina a two-party state.

His political organization, the National Congressional Club, was responsible for the election of Sen. John East, who was a Buckley-like conservative intellectual.

Helms and Ervin are both the subject of two new first-rate biographies. I recently finished reading "Senator Sam Ervin, Last of the Founding Fathers" by Karl Campbell, and I am in the middle of William A. Link's "Righteous Warrior" about Helms.

Although Bailey and Ervin were influential figures, I think Helms should wear the mantle of the father of modern Tar Heel conservatism.

Helms was not a deep conservative thinker. On Bill Buckley's TV program "Firing Line" in the early 1980s, Helms did not do well.

Buckley kept feeding him softball pitches about the intellectual rationale for his leading the opposition to extension of the Voting Rights Act, but Helms mainly replied with standard boilerplate about it being unfair to the South.

Think of Helms as a political leader, not a conservative intellectual -- more Rush Limbaugh than Bill Buckley.