Published: Fri, Jul. 04, 2008 10:59AM

Modified Fri, Jul. 04, 2008 01:26PM

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In 1950, Helms got his first taste of North Carolina politics through his work for conservative Raleigh attorney Willis Smith in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. The race, which pitted Smith against liberal U.S. Sen. Frank Porter Graham, was once called the most overtly racist campaign since the turn of the century.

But Helms, while acknowledging his support of Smith, repeatedly downplayed his role in the campaign. Nonetheless, it seemed to plant the seed for what would become a tremendously successful political career for Helms.

Helms worked briefly as Smith’s administrative assistant in Washington, only to leave to work for the segregationist presidential campaign of Sen. Richard B. Russell of Georgia.

Helms returned to Raleigh as executive director of the N.C. Bankers Association, setting up home on Caswell Street in the Hayes Barton neighborhood where he lived until he died.

Jesse and Dorothy Helms raised two daughters in Raleigh, as well as a son who they adopted as a nine-year-old from a children’s home in Greensboro after reading a newspaper story in which the boy said he wanted a mother and father for Christmas.

In 1957, at the age of 36, Helms won his first political race and a seat on the Raleigh City Council. He served two terms on the council, earning a reputation as a conservative gadfly as he fought against everything from putting a median strip on Downtown Boulevard to an urban renewal project. It was a sign of things to come for Helms.

And it was television that helped him realize his future. In 1960, while still a member of the city council, Helms took a job as a commentator for WRAL-TV in Raleigh. Viewers throughout Eastern North Carolina suddenly began to hear Helms as he railed against the civil rights movement, the liberal news media, and anti-war churches.

Helms said the civil rights movement was infested by communists and “moral degenerates.” He called Social Security “nothing more than doles and handouts.” He described Medicaid as a “step over into the swampy field of socialized medicine.”

In 1970, at the urging of his daughter, Helms switched his registration from Democratic to Republican. Two years later, he ran for the U.S. Senate and was swept into office by a Nixon landslide. Helms was the first Republican senator from North Carolina since Reconstruction.

It was the start of a long and remarkably successful career in the Senate that saw him become the leader of the New Right political movement that helped usher the likes of Ronald Reagan into power.

"Two things that were happening the 70s were the Cold War and the realignment of conservative Democrats to the Republican Party," said Carter Wrenn, former political advisor of Helms' during the Congressional Club years. "Jesse was both a leader of, and a creature, of that movement.

"You can't really separate the growth of the Republican Party from Jesse’s career. In 1972, there hadn't been a Republican elected to the Senate or governor in the 20th century."

From the beginning, Helms did things differently than most senators. In a world where give-and-take is the key to success, Helms refused to play the game of compromise. Rather than get together with opponents to work out their differences, Helms preferred to stand his ground in defeat.

While other senators tried to make their mark by shepherding legislation through the Congress, Helms often made his mark by trying to block legislation that he found objectionable. He became a master of the Senate rules, and never hesitated to use them to his advantage, even if it angered his colleagues in the Senate.

“Compromise, hell!” Helms once wrote. “That’s what has happened to us all down the line — and that’s the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at the time?”

After Helms had conducted an unsuccessful filibuster against a gas tax hike proposed by President Reagan, Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming said: “Seldom have I seen a more obdurate and obnoxious performance.”

Helms often used racial cues to inject his campaigns with the divisive politics of race. The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other black targets were frequent targets of Helms’ speeches and fund-raising letters.

Although Helms denied he was a racist, his work in the Senate often seemed at odds with the interests of blacks.

He has worked in the Senate against civil rights legislation, such as extension of the Voting Rights Act, and domestic programs favored by blacks. He sponsored measures barring court-ordered school busing for integration, and was the leading Senate supporter of the apartheid regime of South Africa.

In 1983, Helms made headlines throughout the country when he made sensational charges as he waged a filibuster against an effort to make King’s birthday a national holiday.

“All his public life, he has done and said things offensive to blacks, and to anyone sensitive to racial nuance,” Ernest B. Furgurson wrote in his 1986 biography of Helms, “Hard Right, the Rise of Jesse Helms.”