To mold a nation

Three decades of political soul

Jesse Helms championed North Carolina industry and salvaged Ronald Reagan's presidential aspirations, trumpeted old-time values and scorned liberals. None can deny his influence through five Senate terms, in which he has guided U.S. policy with Southern gentility and an iron fist.

Sen. Jesse Helms was hardly ever at a loss for an opinion. He rarely passed up a good political brawl. During more than a half-century of public life, Helms has waded into issues as diverse as communism and gay rights, the civil rights revolution and Fidel Castro's revolution.

And Helms made a difference on many of those issues -- as a powerful Senate chairman in Washington, as a leader of a political movement, as a canny politician back home in North Carolina and as a conservative lightning rod on nearly every polarizing issue facing the country.

Last week, Helms, a Raleigh Republican, announced that he would step down when his term ends in January 2003.

While representing North Carolina in Washington for more than 28 years, Helms was known for his crackerjack constituent services, whether it was helping grandma find her lost Social Security check or speeding up a passport application for a businessman.

Helms was also a consistent champion for North Carolina industry; he fought to protect declining industries such as tobacco and textiles and was an ally of growth industries such as banking and pharmaceuticals.

But while Helms represented North Carolina interests in Washington, it was as a national political figure that he became a household name and where he made his most lasting marks, becoming a hero to conservatives and the bete noire of liberals.

"No American politician is more controversial, beloved in some quarters and hated in others, than Jesse Helms," is the assessment of the authoritative "Almanac of American Politics."

Here is a look at some ways in which Helms has helped change politics, government and the way we look at issues.

THE NEW RIGHT

Helms is one reason why social issues, ranging from stem-cell research to same-sex marriages, are on the front burner of the national debate.

At one time, the Republican Party was more closely associated with corporate board rooms and country clubs, as well as some of the traditionally GOP-leaning areas such as North Carolina's mountains and foothills.

Helms helped broaden the party to include religious conservatives and people who drank not just Chablis but sweet tea, and who drove not just BMWs, but pickup trucks.

In doing so, Helms played a pivotal role in moving the Republican Party to the right -- changing the GOP from the party of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller to the party of Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich.

Shortly after arriving in the Senate in 1972, Helms launched a battle for the soul of the Republican party. Moving into a GOP vacuum created by the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Helms sought to rebuild the GOP along more conservative lines.

Helms became one of the leading critics of Ford's administration, charging that it was out of tune with the party's conservative rank and file. He organized like-minded conservative Republican senators into a caucus. Helms talked in 1975 of forming a third party for conservatives if the GOP didn't shape up. His political lieutenants played a large role in recasting the national Republican Party platform at the 1976 and 1980 conventions to make it more conservative. Helms' supporters placed the senator's name in nominations for vice president in 1976 and 1980 as a further means of pressuring the party to move to the right.