RALEIGH -- Jesse Helms sat proudly beside his granddaughter Friday as she signed a check for $919 to the State Board of Elections.

Jennifer J. Knox is the first of Helms' descendants to try to follow in his footsteps, and Helms couldn't have been more proud.

"It means a lot to me that my granddaughter get this attention," Helms said, smiling at the reporters and photographers there to capture the event. "You wait until you become a grandfather and you get to come down here. Your heart just goes pitter-patter."

A Wake County assistant district attorney, Knox will attempt to unseat incumbent District Court Judge Michael Morgan. But her filing Friday was also about symbolism. It was about a descendant of North Carolina's five-term senator entering into the world of politics.

"The biggest part to me is that my grandfather gave 30 years of his life to North Carolina," Knox said.

Her statement prompted Helms, who was getting choked with emotion, to say: "Thank you so much, and I didn't expect that but I appreciate it. You're a great granddaughter. ... Put it there, sweetie."

Knox, 30, then gave her grandfather a handshake.

Helms, 82, won his first political race and a seat on the Raleigh City Council in 1957. He served two terms. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, he spent about 30 years representing North Carolina in the national arena. Helms was the first Republican senator from North Carolina since Reconstruction.

Though elective office was in Helms' blood, it hasn't been in the blood of his offspring or their offspring. Until Knox.

"I'm not surprised that she's running for election," said Jane Knox, Jennifer's mother and Helms' daughter. "She is more like her grandfather than any of the other children. As a child, she would just cling to him."

Jane Knox, who was at Tuesday's filing along with her husband, Charlie, and her mother, Dorothy Helms, said that when the family took trips to Washington, her daughter was always the one who wanted to explore the place.

"She would want to go see the Senate, or go sit in the gallery," Jane Knox said.

North Carolina judges' races are nonpartisan, with the top two vote-getters in a July 20 primary advancing to November's general election. Like her grandfather, Knox is a registered Republican.

Tuesday's family event ended with Helms, wearing a tattered blue cap, placing a black-and-white KNOX sticker on the rear window of his car.

"It's a big day and we've got a lunch date," Jane Knox said to her father.

"Am I paying for it?" Helms shot back.

With a smile, his daughter said: "That's why we bring you along."