RALEIGH, N.C. — When telling stories about Jesse Helms after his death on the Fourth of July, the politician who took his place in Congress recalled how the iconic North Carolina senator liked to invite pages to chat over ice cream.
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"Can you imagine how excited these young people would be, sitting and having ice cream with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee?” asked Sen. Elizabeth Dole.
Stories from others weren't always as sweet.
Helms opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a commentator and voted against its reauthorization once in the Senate. He registered his disgust in 1993 when President Clinton nominated an openly homosexual woman to serve at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that,” Helms said. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine.”
From his early days as television commentator and on through a three-decade career in Congress, former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms never left any doubt about his beliefs.
He was against civil rights and gay rights. Against abortion and communism. Against school busing and giving up the Panama Canal. He said "No!” so often that by the end of his first term, his hometown newspaper gave him the nickname "Senator No.” It wasn't meant as a compliment, but he took it that way.
"There was plenty to stand up and say "No!” to during my first term in the U.S. Senate,” he wrote in "Here's Where I Stand.” "In fact, that was why (I had) run for the U.S. Senate — to try to derail the freight train of liberalism.”
Helms died Friday at age 86.
Friends remembered him as a patriot. Many noted that he died on the Fourth of July, and praised his legacy as an unyielding conservative champion.
"When the Democratic Party sort of moved to the left in the 1960s, I think that a lot of conservative Democrats felt like they lost their voice, and eventually that lead to the realignment of the Republican Party,” said Carter Wrenn, who worked with Helms for 20 years as a leader of his political machine. "That realignment during the time Reagan and Jesse were in office turned the Republican Party into a conservative party. Jesse was one of the main voices of that conservatism.”
As "Senator No,” Helms was a politician who delighted in forcing roll-call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on federal funding for art he deemed pornographic, school busing, flag-burning and other cultural issues. He was a standard-bearer for civil rights foes, opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a commentator and voting against its reauthorization once in the Senate.
"He'll be remembered, in part, for the strong racist streak that articulated his politics and almost all of his political campaigns,” said Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University.
Helms served as chairman of the Agriculture and Foreign Relations committees at times when the GOP held the Senate majority. He placed his stamp on foreign policy with a strident opposition to communism.
"Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom,” President Bush said. "And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side.”
While strident, Helms wasn't inflexible. He worked with Democrats to restructure the foreign policy bureaucracy and pay back debts to the United Nations, a group he disdained for most of his career. After years of clashes with gay activists, he softened his views on AIDS and advocated greater federal funding to fight the disease, and in doing so, struck up an unlikely friendship with U2 frontman Bono.
Helms and his wife, Dorothy, had two daughters and a son. They adopted the boy in 1962 after the child, age 9 and suffering from cerebral palsy, said he wanted parents. That story stood out for Dole and others Friday, as they said he should be remembered as considerate and compassionate.
"The incredible thing (that) was so wonderful about him is that he never, whether you agreed with him or not on issues, it never affected his personal relationship with you,” said former GOP Rep. Bill Cobey. "He believed he had a right to stand for what he believed in, and he believed you did, too.”
•"Under his leadership, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a powerful force for freedom. And today, from Central America to Central Europe and beyond, people remember: in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side.”
President Bush
•"Jesse Helms' legacy is one of hatred, homophobia and racism. Although not its intent, that legacy has made our community stronger and more able to forcefully respond to bigotry and prejudice.”
Joe Solmonese, president, Human Rights Campaign
•"No great man, no matter his era, is short of controversy. I know Jesse would have expected as much.”
North Carolina Republican Chairman Linda Daves
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