Former U.S. Sen. Jesse A. Helms, the son of a Monroe police chief who rose to national prominence to become one of the lions of the American right, died Friday. He was 86.

During a career that spanned more than a half-century as a reporter, congressional aide, banking lobbyist, city council member, hard-hitting television commentator and finally senator, Helms helped define what it means to be a conservative.

Helms, the five-term senator and former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had spent his final years in declining health at a Raleigh retirement facility, his memory slipping away.

Helms' death at 1:18 a.m. on the Fourth of July evoked remembrances from the political world, from the White House to Republican Sens. Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, Democratic Gov. Mike Easley and even Irish rock star Bono.

"Senator Jesse Helms was a tireless advocate for the people of North Carolina, a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty," President Bush said in a statement.

"Jesse Helms was a kind, decent and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called 'the Miracle of America.' So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July."

Few politicians of his time were more controversial than Helms: beloved by many for his unvarnished individualism as he crusaded for greater morality in the public square but also despised by others as a mean-spirited mossback from the old cotton South.

Helms became known as "Senator No" for his battles against everything from increased government spending to civil rights legislation, from communism to the National Endowment for the Arts. Helms was even willing to wage war against fellow Republicans if he thought they were straying from the conservative agenda.

In North Carolina, Helms was a political surgeon, grafting the old segregationist Democratic Party into the body of a newly revived Republican Party. Helms made sure Robert E. Lee was remembered at GOP dinners, and the playing of "Dixie" was never out of fashion at his rallies.

Conservative Democrats -- dubbed Jessecrats -- flocked to Helms, transforming the state GOP from a regional party concentrated in the foothills and mountains into a statewide power. Helms broadened it from the wine-sipping country club set to the sweet-tea-drinking pickup truck crowd.

Nationally, Helms paved the way for the conservative renaissance and was instrumental in the elevation of Ronald Reagan to the White House. Unlike Reagan's sunny optimism, Helms' conservatism had a darker tone.

He was a lightning rod for criticism. Whenever Helms was up for re-election, liberals poured money into the campaign of his Democratic opponent. The chairman of the national Democratic Party, Chuck Manatt, once called Helms the "Prince of Darkness."

By the end of his 30-year Senate career -- matched in Tar Heel history only by Sen. Furnifold Simmons, who served from 1900 to 1930 -- Helms was one of American politics' most recognizable figures, his likeness on the cover of Time magazine and lampooned on wristwatches where time ran backward.

He also was one of Washington's most powerful men. He could call friends some of the great figures of the age -- Reagan, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Russian writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The son of Mr. Jesse

Helms was born Oct. 18, 1921, in Monroe, where his father -- the strapping 6-foot-4-inch "Mr. Jesse" -- was the town police and fire chief. It was a tough town with an active Ku Klux Klan. Even as late as the 1960s, blacks were expected to step off the sidewalks for whites.

Next page >