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.

Helms briefly attended Wingate College near Monroe before leaving for Wake Forest College. He quit after a year to begin a career as a journalist, working for the next 11 years as a newspaper and radio reporter.

Although he later became famous for his feuds with the media, journalism was a ticket to success -- a chance to display his gift with words, to observe politics close up and to meet powerful men who could advance his career.

Helms worked as a sportswriter and news reporter for The News & Observer and as an editor for The Raleigh Times. Though he went on to become a vocal critic of The N&O, Helms found something he liked at the newspaper. While working there, Helms met Dorothy Coble, editor of the society page. They married in 1942.

A start amid racism

Helms did not grow up with politics in his blood. Not until he talked with his father-in-law, a political conservative, did Helms begin to show interest in politics.

In 1950, Helms worked for conservative Raleigh lawyer Willis Smith in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. The race, which pitted Smith against liberal U.S. Sen. Frank Porter Graham, is widely regarded as North Carolina's most overtly racist campaign of the 20th century.

Helms downplayed his role and denied any hand in racist fliers that were distributed. Nonetheless, the campaign seemed to plant the seed for his political career.

He worked briefly as Smith's administrative assistant in Washington, taking a leave of absence 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 house on Caswell Street in the Hayes Barton neighborhood, where he lived until he moved to Mayview Convalescent Center.

Jesse and Dorothy Helms settled into a comfortable life in the 1950s, raising a family, attending church, playing an occasional round of golf and hand of poker.

Helms was "one of the worst [poker players] I ever saw, for the same reason that endears him to a lot of folks," the late Superior Court Judge James H. "Pou" Bailey, a longtime friend, once said. "He is completely honest. If Jesse throws his money on the table, it's because he's got the cards. He never bluffs."

The Helmses raised two daughters in Raleigh, as well as a son whom they adopted as a 9-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 36, Helms won a seat on the Raleigh City Council. He served two terms, fighting against everything from putting a median strip on Downtown Boulevard (now Capital Boulevard) to an urban renewal project.

Finding his voice

A.J. Fletcher is the man most responsible for Helms' rise. Fletcher, a Raleigh lawyer and businessman and an ardent conservative, founded WRAL radio and television. Fletcher had been Helms' boss, and the two men developed a father-son relationship. When Fletcher died in 1979, he left Helms 100 shares in Capitol Broadcasting Co. while leaving none to two of his three sons.

In 1960, Fletcher talked Helms into becoming the second TV editorialist in the country as an ideological counterweight to The N&O -- a newspaper Fletcher once complained has "been so far to the left that they barely escape being behind the Iron or Bamboo curtains."

On Nov. 21, 1960, the first of Helms' 2,800 commentaries aired. For the next 11 years, Helms ended the news broadcast five nights a week with a 4 1/2-minute editorial.

Helms called Social Security "nothing more than doles and handouts." Rural electrification cooperatives were termed "socialistic electric power," and Medicare was a "step over into the swampy field of socialized medicine.''

Helms said the civil rights movement was infested with communists and "moral degenerates."

Raleigh lawyer Tom Ellis, a Helms poker buddy, began to notice the Helms phenomenon when he lunched with him at a popular cafeteria in the Hudson Belk department store in downtown Raleigh. The servers, mainly middle-aged white country women, began treating Helms as a celebrity.

Ellis began encouraging Helms to run for the Senate in 1966.

In 1970, at the urging of his daughter, Helms switched his registration from Democrat 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 horse-and-buggy days.

Creating the New Right

There was a political vacuum on the right when Helms arrived in Washington. Sen. Barry Goldwater's White House bid had gone down in flames in 1964. President Richard Nixon was enmeshed in the Watergate scandal. And Reagan's national aspirations were still ahead of him.

Helms and his lieutenants -- mainly idealistic young conservatives willing to work long hours for low pay -- began to shape a political movement that would be called "The New Right."

Helms organized like-minded senators into a conservative caucus in 1974. That same year, Helms became chairman of the Committee on Conservative Alternatives -- serving as a liaison among groups opposed to abortion and busing and in favor of school prayer.

"Those were dark days," said New Right activist Connie Marshner. "There weren't many conservatives in Washington. He sort of became the standard-bearer for the movement."

Helping galvanize the movement was the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, legalizing abortion. Helms became the leading abortion foe in the Senate.

Unhappy with the moderate Republicanism of President Ford and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, Helms toyed with the idea of forming a third party in 1975. Helms abandoned the idea when he found his man in the Republican Party: California Gov. Ronald Reagan.

Helms' political organization saved Reagan's career during the 1976 North Carolina GOP primary when Reagan's challenge to Ford was sputtering. With Helms' help, Reagan won North Carolina, placing him on a trajectory to win the presidency in 1980.

The Reagan election was a pivotal moment, marking the ascendancy of conservatism, with Republicans eventually taking control of Congress and electing the two Bushes to the White House.

Building a machine

When Helms ran for Senate in 1972, North Carolina was dominated by one party: a pro-business Democratic Party that had propped up racial segregation for most of the century.

By 1972, white Southern Democrats were fleeing to the GOP -- thanks in part to the black drive for racial equality, the divisions over Vietnam and a cultural backlash against drugs, abortion and the sexual revolution.

To take advantage of the situation, Helms and his aides created a powerful political machine.

The National Congressional Club was bankrolled mainly by thousands of small donors from around the country. It relied on cutting-edge television advertising, with a payroll of seasoned operatives working out of a North Raleigh office park. The club raised an estimated $100 million from the time it was created in 1973 to retire Helms' initial campaign debt until its demise in 1996 as a result of internal feuding.

"Raleigh was the center of The Cause," said Alex Castellanos, a Helms operative who later became a national GOP consultant. "At the end of the day, The Cause helped balance the budget, knock down the Berlin Wall, elect Ronald Reagan president and make conservatives mainstream. That is where the movement started in America -- in Raleigh with Jesse Helms."

The club not only engineered Helms' re-election in 1978, 1984 and 1990 but also elected John East, an obscure political science professor at East Carolina University, to the Senate in 1980, and a Clinton businessman, Lauch Faircloth, to the Senate in 1992.

The club knocked over Democrats like bowling pins. The Helms organization handed four-term Gov. Jim Hunt his only defeat. It unseated U.S. Sens. Robert Morgan, a moderate Democrat, and Terry Sanford, a liberal. It scotched the Senate hopes of John Ingram, a white populist, and Harvey Gantt, the black former mayor of Charlotte.

The Helms organization was among the first in North Carolina to understand the power of television. Attack ads became the calling card for Helms campaigns -- whether it was tying Morgan to the Panama Canal treaty, Hunt to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday or Gantt to racial quotas.

Always just enough

Helms won re-election four times. With his confrontational politics, it was never easy. Helms won with 55 percent, 52 percent and, twice, with 53 percent -- figures far below what most established Senate incumbents received.

Helms was an unlikely political star. He was not a war hero like South Carolina's Strom Thurmond, he did not have Reagan's Hollywood looks or charm, and he often talked as if he had a mouthful of marbles.

But Helms had a Trumanesque, give-'em-hell style that many appreciated.

He was a master of constituent politics, and his staff helped thousands of North Carolinians obtain Social Security checks or passports. He would sometimes keep world leaders waiting while he met with constituents.

Helms often labored late into the evening, pecking with two fingers on his manual Royal typewriter, sending personal notes to people across the state.

"When I was elected to the Senate, I made a commitment to myself that I would not be a big-shot senator," Helms said after he retired. "I wanted to do what I could for the so-called little people."

Although he had a fierce public image, Helms also had a ready wit. During a speech in Goldsboro in 1990, Helms had some advice for a San Francisco woman who wrote to the senator to tell him she threw up at the mention of his name:

"The next time it happens, frame it and send it to the National Endowment for the Arts, and they'll give you $5,000."

On the campaign trail, Helms articulated small-town values. His stories about growing up in Monroe -- about turkeys being taken to market and a little boy buying flowers for his mother's grave -- had a Norman Rockwell character.

"Helms conjures up a sort of nostalgia about what many people think were better times -- the age of the nuclear family, a time when children obeyed their parents and blacks knew their place -- that made North Carolina seem like a better place to live, to a certain number of people," said William Snider, the longtime editor of the News & Record in Greensboro.

If Helms could bring a lump to the throat, he also could cause veins to bulge.

"He was a brawler, and that came across to people," said Carter Wrenn, a Helms strategist. "And he was holier than thou. Jesse had sort of a moralist attitude, an 'I'm right and you're wrong, and you're going straight to Hades.' "

Helms was an unceasing foe of the 20th century's social movements -- the drives for equality by blacks, women and gays. While others saw groups striving for a piece of the American dream, Helms saw threats to the social fabric.

Along with former gubernatorial candidate I. Beverly Lake Sr., Helms was a leading voice for segregation in North Carolina. Unlike other well-known segregationists, such as Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Thurmond, Helms never repudiated his views or reached out to black voters.

He portrayed the civil rights movement as being planned in Moscow, dismissed Martin Luther King Jr. as a Marxist and a pervert, and called racial integration a phony issue.

"All his public life, he has done and said things offensive to blacks, and to anyone sensitive to racial nuance," wrote Ernest Furgurson, his first biographer.

'Compromise, hell!'

In the traditionally clubby Senate, where give and take is the key to success, Helms refused to play the game of compromise. Rather than work out his differences with opponents, Helms preferred to stand his ground in defeat.

"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 conducted an unsuccessful filibuster against a gas tax increase proposed by Reagan, Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming said, "Seldom have I seen a more obdurate and obnoxious performance."

Helms was forced to change his role gradually as Republicans gained control of the Senate and the White House.

He became chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee in 1981 but seemed less comfortable with the back-scratching of farm politics. He needed majority leader Bob Dole to help rescue a farm bill that was in trouble.

But he achieved a longtime dream when, in 1995, he became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Helms' first love had always been foreign affairs. He was an anti-communist hard liner -- from opposing detente with the Soviet Union during the Nixon administration to fighting friendlier relations with China during the presidency of George W. Bush.

Helms worked against socialist regimes in Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, and opposed nearly every nuclear arms agreement with the Soviet Union and most international treaties, including an anti-genocide pact, fearing they would impinge on American sovereignty.

He operated on the principle that any foe of communism was a friend of his. So Helms befriended not only dissidents such as Solzhenitsyn and Chinese protester Harry Wu but also Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, colonels charged with running death squads in El Salvador, and the apartheid regimes of South Africa and the former Rhodesia.

In his final years in the Senate, Helms was a more traditional lawmaker. He worked in bipartisan fashion to reorganize the U.S. State Department. Helms approved paying $1 billion in U.S. debt to the United Nations, an organization he had long despised, and became the the first U.S. senator to address a meeting of the U.N. Security Council in 2000.

His years of decline

Helms' Washington office showed how far the son of a Monroe police chief had come. The walls were lined with cartoons lampooning him, as well as personally inscribed photographs of actor John Wayne, Solzhenitsyn and evangelist Billy Graham.

A longtime smoker, Helms suffered many health problems starting in the early 1990s. He had double knee-replacement surgery, underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer, suffered from Paget's bone disease in his hip and had peripheral neuropathy, a loss of sensation in his feet, which required him to use a motorized scooter or walker.

In 2002, Helms experienced a lengthy hospitalization when he had a prosthetic heart valve inserted. And in his final years, his memory began to fail him as he suffered from vascular dementia, and he had a hard time recognizing many longtime friends.

By that time, Helms had announced his retirement.

Even in poor health, Helms was a powerful political symbol, giving his blessings to such GOP Senate candidates as Burr and Dole.

And he could still pull in a crowd.

In barbecue joints, filling stations and church basements across North Carolina, all you had to do was say the name "Jesse," and everyone knew whom you were talking about -- no last name necessary.

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