Political patron Coffer dies

Doctor became Jesse Helms' spokesman on medical issues

RALEIGH -- Though he was a wealthy anesthesiologist and close confidant of some of the state's most powerful Republican politicians, Dr. Bert Coffer stayed true to the simple values he learned growing up on a farm in Lee County, family and friends say.

When snow blanketed his North Raleigh neighborhood, Coffer would drive around on a vintage John Deere tractor scraping the roads and driveways.

"He was always proud of his upbringing, which was humble, but it served him well," said his widow, Jeanne. "He loved going back to the homeplace and working on the farm."

Coffer died Thursday, after suffering a heart attack about a week earlier. He was 66.

A graduate of N.C. State University and the UNC Medical School, Coffer was one of a handful of anesthesiologists at Rex Hospital when he started in 1975.

It was there he met Jesse Helms, as the then-freshman senator prepared for back surgery. The two men struck up a friendship that lasted nearly 30 years.

Coffer not only acted as Helms' personal physician but increasingly as his media spokesman as the senator's health declined during his final years in office.

"Any time Jesse needed medical advice, he'd say, 'Call Bert,' " said Dot Helms, the senator's wife. "He was a close friend and medical adviser to both me and my husband. We're devastated at his death."

In 1996, when Helms' campaign treasurer resigned during what would be the senator's last re-election campaign, Coffer stepped into the job. By that time, he had built his two-doctor medical practice into a major regional provider of anesthesia services. He used his political and professional contacts to raise big money for conservative candidates.

That role attracted scrutiny in 1998, when GOP incumbent Sen. Lauch Faircloth ran for a second term against a then little-known Democratic upstart named John Edwards. With Coffer's help, anesthesiologists were among the top donors to Faircloth's campaign.

That year, Faircloth introduced a bill in Congress that sought to block Medicaid from ending a requirement that anesthesiologists be present during all surgical procedures -- one of several pro-business bills benefiting the senator's financial backers.

But Coffer would work with Democrats when political winds blew them in the same direction, such as in 2002 when he helped lead the charge against allowing Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina to become a for-profit corporation.

It is a measure of Coffer's influence that both of North Carolina's sitting senators -- Republicans Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr -- released statements expressing condolences at the death of a man they both counted as a friend.

Former Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer said Coffer was his mentor when he first started getting involved in politics.

"He was really an uncommon man," Fetzer said. "Being a physician and being a political activist is a rare combination in my experience. Bert was really instrumental in making changes by helping get people elected."

Coffer is survived by his wife, three children and three grandchildren.

(News researcher Denise Jones contributed to this report.)