Jesse Helms' Lessons for Washington (The Washington Post)

    I

l

i

i

;tit----- "'rs"""""- Jesse Helms' Lessons'for Washington
TffiqffiT,ffiffiT Big Buclx, Streetfighterb Shitts, Racist Appts md Ctwisttw Still work
nyths: thrtJcase Aleeder Helnls is e slir-
ical dinaE out of touch with rhc iain' ' .. ideolosy atld FEooality' sekbh are yotels 

It is a politbs ofdisto(tim, halt truths and
stseam otr hi! pafty ard st te. h€ nauon's preeninent -,t **E 6i;ii-i"i';;j.;;;i'"fi4;til- i" 

"*.r",o assassin rioo. En& are us€d to

"-f*Xm*ffid*"*'*g;1 ffil#'H#""Y',ffiT*ffi#i": Tffir1ffiffi;1. i',iiiir,i,*",*r-,r,ortenrakesabacksst.
ine aflinity c,ith r,i" 

"ut", "na "n 
inil[ -Hgq" !hv" rr t" 9*" !,$; ne.il; *f ffi#:#f*ffi#ffi".'# ' 

Tlre birnronev nature of the-race made

glasporriowtomotivarei6,;i;ilil; what b necessary ro win without "-l"E mr:ffim9ff:,[*,lu#g;:* #Ul'**mf ffihT"f;flli-nin;d 
the pottics o{ cor{r;tadil;"f Ttrc hiShminded mav 6nd his meth;ds

ti* campaisnins ro a hish art. '"s'- p,;;-r;;ffi;i;fi;:';Ai;; ffi;f: camDaisn in history' As such' it cardes so'ne ffi;'Y*:il.;i;, 'il;-G-iiiii'tiiii'm.,ilt6d""c*-=iLe"B.HorrJr..a ffiit;A:,J'"i#^il;;ii-,#ffiffi effifrjtrfli*Frt*tr"*.'"" li":?i;}*f**-Hr;*l;""#*p.-sin8 ;"d.il; ;;;;fri"ffi-hil;i "H""rT#n*l jHH" -. , ,n*. rhc tine, extoins H€rtns, virtues. others re-

^ B*p,u,*"*N*"h,n" 
- 

tT,:Hf,H'"53,$';ffitr*[trilI f ;ffi#fl1tr"ffi *itrmt H#*Hm'L1ff,5ff,tHI:..'trT
')i4\Y4eangtorPort ' tioo in tlle country this year, a fieat aa*r ot L) ui"a. eiaitit'nfi**W citireo of North Grolina you have the good

Lt-J.'p,r), No^r tj, lqiq L r

fortune of behg able to vote for Jesse
Hetns. I urge you to do so."

But muctr of the creative energl in both
campaigns and ttrc biggest chunk of the $22
millibnipent in the race went for television
commeriials stretching over 20 montls.
Some 7,800 TV spots were broadcast during
tle last five weeks alone.

The ads took on a life of their own. Hunt
would air a commercial attacking Helms for
opposing a bipartisan plan to rescue Sdoial

S'erluriti. Helms repliid with an ad of !ris.
own.- tiunt ,n.*etid it with another ld;r
Helms countered with another new ad,

Both sides said they kept it up because it
worked. Altogether, Hunt made eight differ'
ent Social Security ads. "It was rather like a

debate. If Jesse Helms didn't respond to one

of our ads, he lost a point," said Hunt media
adviser David SawYer.

SeoHELMS'C4CoL3



From '84's Meanest CampaigN 
HELMS, From Cl 

"People would say they didn't like the 
negative ads, but our polls showed they 
changed people's minds. On Social Security 
you could watch a 10 to 15 percent shift de­
pending on who was on the air." 

The nightly tracking polls and the ability 
of both campaigns to produce commercials 
almost overnight produced a new kind of 
electronic politics, impossible a decade ago. 
Big money enabled the two campaigns to 
wage a day-by-day, week-by-week debate. far 
more importl\nt than the League of Women 
Voter forums common to most races. 

Hunt, for example, wanted to beef up his 
strength among young women voters. So he 
ran a commerical on top-40 radio stations 
that said an antiabortion ·human-life bill sup­
ported by Helms "could outraw many of the 
birth-control devices that millions of Amer­
ican women use today - like the IUD and 
many forms of The Pill." 

Helms tracking polls found the ad damag­
ing the Republican senator, so his campaign 
produced a new television ad featuring Doro­
thy Helms, the senator's wife, calling the 
Hunt ad "disgusting and dishonest." 

"Jim Hunt has accused my husband of 
sponsoring legislation outlawing a women's 
right to qse contraceptive qevices including 
the birth control pill," she said. "That is an 
outright falsehood. • . . I'd have never I» 
lieved that Jim Hunt would stoop this low." 

It hardly mattered who began the nega­
tive attacks. Helms and the National Con­
gressional Club, a political action committee 
run by his allies, had used negative advertis­
ing long before the Senate race began. Hunt 
forces embraced the same techniques. In the 
end it was hard to tell who was guilty of the 
worst smear attacks. 

Two commercials aired in the closing days 
of the campaign are illustrative. One, a 30-
second Helms spot, pictured a weJJ..<lressed 
woman in a new car showroom. She said she 
wanted to buy the shiny, new auto beside 
her, but wouldn't be able to if Hunt won the 
election because he would raise taxes $157 a 
month .. A "$157" sign atop the ·car drove 
the point home. 

The ad was dynamite, slick and persuasive 
without even mentioning Helms' naine. But 
the charge was false. The $157 tax figure 
was a phony one, based on inflated Republi­
can estimates of how much Walter F. Moo­
dale's tax increase and spending proposals 
would cost. And Hunt opposed the proposed 
Mondale tax hike. , 

A 30-minute television show Hunt aired 
on Sunday and Monday before the election 
portrayed Helms· as leader of.a "tig~t. ideo­
logical, right-wing ·political network" with 
. close ties to Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of 
the Moral Majority; Phyllis SchJafly, head of 
the conservative Eagle Forum; the Rev. Sun 
Myung Moon, head of the Unification 
Church, and "right-wing political and mili­
tary dictators around the world." 
· The show overstated Helms' ties. Asked 

to justif¥ the Helms-Moon link, for example, 
Hunt cited only an article on the race in The 
Washington Times, which is owned by 
Moon's church, and a donation made to 
Helms' campaign by a former editor. 

But the big problem was the deceptive 
way th~ show was presented. It was. pro­
duced to look like a network documentary on 
the race, complete with shots of network an­
chormen Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and 
Peter Jennings. Any viewer who missed dis­
claimers at the beginning and end of the 
show might assume he or she were ·watching 
news, not propaganda. 

L esson: Never underestimate the poli­
tics of personality. 

Helms, 63, and Hunt, 47, presented 
contrasting styles and personalities. After a 
decade as a television commentator and two 
terms in the Senate, Helms has a firm image 
as an antipolitician politician, a man not 
afraid to speak his piece or take on unpopu­
lar causes. His manner is homespun yet 
courtly; his supporters use words like 
"statesman" to describe him. 

Hunt is a blander man, a consensus politi- · 
.cian. In his eight years as governor, he built 
a solid record of achievement in industrial 
development and educational improvement, 
but he is best known as an adroit pol. 

Helms' maverick image gave hiin a Teflon 
coat; he was more immune to attack than 
Hunt. 

"Helms has placed himself almost beyond 
the pale. He can say outrageous things and 
people think it's a badge of courage," ob­
served North Carolina Democratic chairman 
David Price. "The image of Helms is a com­
bination of the familiar Uncle Jesse together 
with the angry maverick that stic~s it to 
them up in Washington." 

· "A Jot of people believe everything Helms 
Says is true, and Hunt doesn't have ·that 
going for him," said Merle Black, a political 
science professor at the University of North 
Carolina. "Hunt is viewed as a politician. His 
ambition is too transparent." 

L esson: Jim Crow politics still work. 
Racial epithets and standing in 

school doors is no longer fashionable, 
but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of 
race are alive and well. Helms is their mas­
ter. 

A case in point was the pivotal event of 
the campaign: Helms' filibuster against a bill 
making the birthday of the late Martin Lu­
ther King Jr. a national holiday. Eyes rolled 
in the Senate in October 1983 when Helms 
launched the filibuster, attacking King for 
espousing "action-oriented Marxism." 
Helms lost the battle in the Senate. Even re­
formed race baiters like Sen. Strom Thur­
mond (R-S.C.) lined up against him. But he 
won the war in North Carolina. 

A poll before the filibuster showed Helms 
trailing Hunt by 20 percentage points. By 
December, Hunt's lead was sliced in half. 
White voters who had been feeling doubts 
about Helms began returning to the fold. 

Helms campaign literature soimded a 
drumbeat of warnings about black voter­
registration drives. His campaign newspaper 
featured photographs of Hunt with Jesse L. 
Jackson and headlines like "Black Voter 
Registration Rises Sharply" .and "Hunt 
Urges More Minority Registration." 

Helms shamelessly mined the race issue. 
He called Hunt a "racist" for appealing to 
black votes on the basis of his st,~pport of civil 
rights measures. His press secretary Claude 
Allen, a black, tried to link Hunt with 
"queers." Allen later apologized. 

But Helms didn't waver. On election eve, 
he accused Hunt of being supported by 
"homosexuals, . the labor-union bosses and 
the croOks" and said he fe'ared a large "bloc 
vote." What' did he mean? "The black vote," 
Helms said. 

Helms received 63 percent of the white 
vote, according to the Voters Education 
Project (VEP) in Atlanta, which examined 

Yet Helms didn't back away from his 
allies, or the New Right cau they es­
pouse. He described the election a rete:. .. _ 
endum on "the conservative cause, free­
enterprise cause, but most of all the ca of• 
decency, honor and spiritual and moral 
cleanliness in America." 

He accused the press of trying to intimi­
date Falwell and other fundamentalist Chris­
tians, who had come to North Carolina to 
register tens of thousands of new voters. He 
pledged to .continue his fight to restore 
prayer in public schools and ban abortion, 
'and promised over and over again not to· 
relinquish his post as chairman of the Senate 
Agriculture Committee. 

"I am the first North Carolinian in 149 
years to serve as chairman," he said. "H 
·North Carolina loses that chairinaship it will 
Jose the tobacco and peanut program as · 
well." 

As 30 senators, Vice President George 
Bush and Ronald Reagan trooped into the 
state in his behalf, and scores of people lined 
up ·asking Helms to autograph their family 
Bibles, the high priest of the New Right did­
n't look so dangerous. 

But the question remained: What kind of 
state was North Carolina? And the answer · 
was: one of stark contrasts and schizo­
phrenic politics. 

There is, for example, the North Carolina 
of the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Research 
Triangle with its great universities, high­
tech industries and more PhDs per capita · 
than anyplace in the country. But this is just 
one of North Carolina's many faces. Its in­
dustrial wages are dead last among the 50 · 
states. One-fourth of its adults haven't fm­
ished high school. And only two states have 
more mobile homes. · 

Helms l}nd Hunt represent two different 
political currents: a yearniilg for change and 
a fear of change, a division over trusting 

je§e Helms Has a Problem; 
He~s Destined. to lose in ~34 
Thirteen months ago, Outlook printed an analysjs of the North Carolina Senate cam­

. paign·under this headline. On election night, Sen. Jesse Helms held it up for the tele­
vision cameras during a victory celebration. 

returns in sample precincts. Network exit 
polls indicate he scored particularly well 
among whites in small t~wns and rural areas. 

L esson: White Democrats, even moder- · 
ates with good civil-rights records, can't 
count on an overwhelming black vote. · 

Hunt slaughtered Helms among blacks. A 
VEP study of 35 almost-~-black precincts 
showed Helms received less thari 1 percent 
of the black vqte. 

Tl)e black vote - strengthened by Jesse 
Jackson's presidential candidacy - was sup­
posed to be the great new missile in the 
Democratic Party's arsenal this fall. North 
Carolina (where blacks make up 22.4 per- · 
cent of the population, the lowest percent­
age in the South) was a special target for 
xoter registration efforts this year, because 
it .had a low percentage of blacks registered 
to vote. Black registration rose 37 percent 
since early 1983, from 451,000 to 619,000. 

To win, Hunt strategists calculated the 
two-term governor needed one-third of the 
white vote and a ·record black turnout. His­
torically, blacks have made up about, 14.2 
percent of voters in the state. Hunt aides fig­
ured that this would rise to 18.4 percent if 
the same percentage of blacks voted as 

· whites- roughly 7 in 10. 
Hunt got 37 percent of the white and 98.8 

percent of the black vote, according to VEP. 
But only 61 percent of registered blacks 
voted, down from 63 percent in 1980, per­
haps because there were few close contests . 
this year involving black candidates. Hunt 
lost 52-48 overall. 

L esson: Those death notices about the 
New Right were premature. 

Hunt took the New Right on over 
its agenda and leadership. He cast the elec~ 
tion as a referendum on "right-wing extrem­
ism," and what kind of place North Carolina 
wanted to be - a national headquarters for 
the political right or a "middle-of-the-road, 
progressive state." 

Hunt did demonstrate that a Democrat 
can compete with the best of the conserva­
tive money machines. Helms raised more 
money than his Democratic opponent ($13 
million to $8 million), but Hunt wasn't 
starved for funds. "Helms is a marvelous 
devil to raise money against," said Roger 
Craver, Hunt's direct mail adviser. 

government and wanting government to 
·solve problems . 

Voters this time picked the Helms version 
of the state, but ever so narrowly- 86,761 
votes. 

According to ABC exit polls, the two can­
didat.es ran neck and neck among young pro­
fessionals as well as farmers. Helms beat 
Hunt 59 to 39 percent among born-again 
Christians as might be expected, but the 
two-term Republican senator also beat Hunt 
decisively ,among voters under· 24 and those 
earning more than $40,000 a year. 

A si~al had been sent to the wbrld, 
Helms crowed election night. "North Caro­
lina is a conservative, God-fearing state." 

L esson: There may be a fundamental 
rejection of the direction of the na­
tional Democratic Party underway in 

the South. 
After all is said, the ,nomination of Walter 

F. Mondale cost the Democrats the North 
Carolina Senate seat. The amazing thing was 
not that Hunt lost, but that he carne as close 
to winning as he did. 

The New Deal liberalism that Mondale 
embraced all his political career is an anath­
ema to many voters in the South. Mondale's 
tax-increase plan made matters worse. It put 
Democrats on the defensive, struggling .for 
survival even in states like North Carolina, 
where the party has a 3-to-1 registration 
edge. 

"The two most decisive factors turned out 
to be Mondale and taxes," said Charles 
Black, a Helms consultant. 

Helms wrapped himself firmly in Ronald · 
Reagan's coattails; Hunt acted almost em­
barrassed about his national ticket. When 
Mondale visited the state, Hunt conveniently 
found himself on vac;ation. 

Hunt, in national terms, was hardly a lib­
eral. He opposes the nuclear freeze; he sup­
ports the B-1 bomber, the MX missile and a 
constitutional amendment requiring a bal­
anced federal budget. 

But he could never shake the charge that 
he was a "Mondale liberal" who wanted to 
raise taxes. Helms ran 10-second TV spots 
that showed the governor saying, "Of 
course, I'm for Mondale." 

Reagan carried North Carolina by a 62-38 
percent margin, carrying a new Republican 
governor and four new GOP congressmen in 
with him. 

I