User:Oceanflynn/sandbox/Jesse Helms bibliography

Jesse Helms selected bibliography Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) served as a Republican Senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. Helms helped Ronald Reagan's campaign for the Presidency.

Early years

"Even before the Depression, life [in Monroe] was a constant struggle. It produced generations of deeply conservative poor whites, steeped in jingoistic patriotism and fundamentalist religion, who regarded the surrounding black population as barely part of the human race."

— Harold Jackson. 2008. The Guardian

Helms' father, "Big Jesse" served as police chief in Monroe, Union County . Helms was raised in a strict Baptist faith tradition with strong law-and-order. Helms attended Monroe High School in Union County. He was recruited by his home-county Wingate University, a private institution which he attended. Tobacco was grown in agricultural areas around Monroe, Union County and the town was a trading center since the 1800s. Racial segregation in Monroe was pervasive; the Monroe Ku Klux Klan chapter had an estimated 750 members out of 12, 000 Monroe residents of the town. When African American war veterans, like Robert F. Williams, returned to Monroe, the town became was a center of African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68). As Monroe NAACP Chapter President, Williams worked to integrate public facilities, such as the library and Monroe's public swimming pool, built with federal funds during the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 1961 some of the Freedom Riders found a base with Monroes' black community.

Career

He dropped out of Wingate, became a journalist for Raleigh's The News & Observer in Raleigh, "a newspaper he would come to revile during his political career." He served as a recruiter for the US Navy during World War II, and never went overseas. Then he returned to journalism after the War.

Senator

1973 election

Thomas F. Ellis, a lawyer and political activist involved in numerous conservative causes from Raleigh, North Carolina, was manager of Senator Helms' 1972 Republican primary campaign. Ellis nurtured a powerful network, "a multimillion-dollar political empire of corporations, foundations, political action committees and ad hoc groups" active in the 1980s. With the respected professional campaign manager F. Clifton White, directing the general election campaign, Helms won, defeating the favored Democrat, Congressman Nick Galifianakis. Ellis formed a political action committee in 1973 to cover Helms' campaign debts.

Helms was described as "a firebrand United States senator whose outspoken, conservative views polarized North Carolina and U.S. voters for decades." Helms spoke out "against issues like gay rights, federal funding for the arts and U.S. foreign aid.

He wrote a memoir.

Helms played "a prominent role in the Reagan Revolution of the 1970s and 1980s and the rising tide of Republicanism of the 1990s." Helms was a "thorn in the side of every president," liberal or conservative. "Foreign Relations Committee, perhaps the most powerful committee in the Senate" refused to moderate positions on gay rights and funding for the National Endowment of the Arts...He shifted his on debt relief for Third World countries toward the end of his career...began to work more closely with his colleagues on the other side of the partisan aisle. He routinely lost votes in the Senate 90 to 3.

By 1995, under his tenure as Senator for North Carolina since 1975, his State ranked fifth from the bottom in terms of receiving federal funds per capita; ninth in terms of residents living in poverty, and 42nd in the release of cancer-causing toxins, 43rd in manufacturing wages, and 44th in infant mortality.

Civil rights

In 1950 Helms "worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of segregationist Democratic candidate Willis Smith" in Washington, D.C. and "served as Smith's assistant after the election." Helms opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and called it "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress."

In an in-depth review of the controversial takeover battle of CBS by Fairness in Media, published in the Washington Post on March 31, 1985, journalists Thomas B. Edsall and David A. Vise reported that the two people organizing the takeover battle Senator Jesse Helms and Thomas F. Ellis were linked to the Pioneer Fund, which has "financed research into "racial betterment" by scientists seeking to prove that blacks are genetically inferior to whites."

disabilities

"When the subject of Trump came up aboard Air Force Two, Biden referred to a well-worn story about how, as a freshman senator, he saw Jesse Helms, the arch-conservative North Carolina Republican, ripping into a piece of disabilities legislation. Biden was furious about it and began attacking Helms to Mike Mansfield, the Democratic Senate majority leader. Puffing on his pipe, Mansfield asked Biden if he knew that Helms and his wife had adopted a disabled 9-year-old boy no one else would take. “Question a man’s judgment, not his motives,” Mansfield instructed. Biden, who was invited by Helms decades later to give his eulogy, is convinced that absorbing Mansfield’s advice is what allowed him to work with Senate Republicans during the Obama years, to negotiate the approval of the New Start nuclear-arms-reduction treaty, the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the expansion of the earned-income tax credit, among other accomplishments."

Slum landlord

The personal property of Helms and his wife Dorothy which over a dozen rental units and their home, "was valued for tax purposes at more than $1.4 million in 1995. Their rentals were mainly in poor black districts in Raleigh. Some tenants complained about inadequate heating.

"An investigation by The Independent, a weekly newspaper in Durham, found that the Helmses employ two rental agents to manage their properties—one in low-income black neighborhoods and another in middle-class white areas. Some of the low-income units are in disrepair; Harrington's house has a rusty fuse box, peeling linoleum, missing doors, and a leaky ceiling."

— Eric Bates. June 1995. Mother Jones

Affirmative action

A television ad used to win Helm the 1990 election, "showed a white man's hands crumpling a rejection notice from a company that had used an affirmative action program to hire a black job candidate."

On September 11, 2013, White House correspondent Jennifer Bendery reported that Ted Cruz claimed the United States "would be better off if the Senate was full of people like Jesse Helms, the late senator who was ardently opposed to all kinds of civil rights measures."

Anti-liberal

Helms earned a strong southern following starting from 1960 to 1970 when he began working for Capitol Broadcasting Co., the parent of WRAL. Every evening he aired his conservative views where he "blasted the federal government, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and other entities he viewed as too liberal." "His commentaries were repeated by 70 southern radio stations and, as they became increasingly popular, reprinted in 200 newspapers across America." With this popularity as a base, Helms campaigned and won U.S. in the 1972 U.S. Senate elections - the first Republican senator from North Carolina to win in nearly 80 years. Helms "switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party when the Democrats began pressing for civil rights legislation in the 1960s." He joined the Republican party under President Richard Nixon. in a 1981 fundraising letter for the National Conservative Political Action Committee, he warned, "Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade school classes that teach our children that cannibalism, wife-swapping, and the murder of infants and the elderly are acceptable behaviour." [From W. article: 2 B summarized: He opposed civil rights at first, disability rights, feminism, gay rights, affirmative action, access to abortions, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and the National Endowment for the Arts. Helms brought an "aggressiveness" to his conservatism, as in his rhetoric against homosexuality. He used racially charged language in his campaigns and editorials. The Almanac of American Politics once wrote that "no American politician is more controversial, beloved in some quarters and hated in others, than Jesse Helms".The Almanac of American Politics once wrote that "no American politician is more controversial, beloved in some quarters and hated in others, than Jesse Helms".

Racism

In 2001, when Helms announced his retirement, David Broder, a widely respected political columnist for The Washington Post, called Helms "the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country."

"What is unique about Helms – and from my viewpoint, unforgivable – is his willingness to pick at the scab of the great wound of American history, the legacy of slavery and segregation, and to inflame racial resentment against African Americans."

— David Broder. 2001. The Washington Post

1984 election

Washington Post journalist, Bill Peterson, described the United States Senate election in North Carolina, 1984 as reaching a new low level of hate campaign. Helms accused Hunt of "being supported by "homosexuals, the labor-union bosses and the crooks" and said he feared a large "bloc vote" ... "the black vote." In 1983, a year before the 1984 election, "when public polls showed Helms trailing by 20 points, he launched a Senate filibuster against the bill making the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday." Voters Education Project (VEP) in Atlanta study showed that Helms received 63 percent of the white vote and was particularly successful in small towns and rural areas while receiving less than 1 percent of the black vote in 35 almost-all-black precincts. "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." Helm and Hunt "ran neck and neck among young professionals as well as farmers." The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Research Triangle has "more PhDs per capita than anyplace in the country" one-quarter of North Carolina's adults had not completed high school by 1984. It had among the lowest industrial wages in the United States and was third in terms of mobile homes.

Tobacco industry

Since the 1970s, while chairing the Senate Agriculture Committee, Helms "providing critical support" for the tobacco industry - North Carolina was "a major tobacco-producing state."

Charles Babington, the Washington correspondent for the News and Observer and the Raleigh Times, reported that tobacco use was labelled as hazardous and per capita smoking had been on the decline since 1964, in 1985, Helms pressured both the Reagan and Bush administrations to implement aggressive U.S. export policy by threatening Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Taiwan with "costly sanctions" if they refused to open their markets and allow Philip Morris' cigarette companies, Merits and Marlboros to sell cigarettes in their borders. The Trade and Tariff Act of 1984 and the Omnibus Foreign Trade and Competitiveness Act 1988 were passed. Asian countries responded by suddenly dropping "trade barriers to U.S. cigarettes" in spite of Tawian's stated concerns about the adverse effect on public health. By 1989, two-thirds of the Japanese male population were smokers and in Taiwan and South Korea, sales grew by more than 2,400%. In a New York Times 1990 article, it was reported that Philip Morris Companies, the "largest packaged-goods concern in the world" was one of Helms' 'major backers,' having "contributed to his election campaigns and awarded a five-year, $200,000 grant to the Jesse Helms Citizenship Center."

Foreign affairs

Helms opposed "international aid program. He claimed that giving financial aid was like "pouring money down foreign rat holes." He "avidly supporting military juntas in Latin America and minority white regimes in Southern Africa."

As Chairman of the foreign relations committee in 1995, and a member since 1981, "Helms refused to hold confirmation hearings for 18 new ambassadors, or to debate such key issues for the Clinton administration as the chemical weapons or strategic arms treaties...He cut the state department's funds by $1,700m until the administration finally agreed to his reorganization proposals, abolishing the arms control and information services and placing new restrictions on the US aid agency."

"The treaties were the source of controversy in the United States, particularly among conservatives such as Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, who regarded them as the surrender of a strategic American asset to what they characterized as a hostile government." Helms considered the Panama Canal as an American asset and opposed the Panama Canal Treaties - Torrijos–Carter Treaties.

Jesse Helms Center

In 1994, Helms established the Jesse Helms Center in his home town of Wingate, "at which American and foreign dignitaries could pay homage. Those unable to attend in person could demonstrate their goodwill in cash: Taiwan donated $225,000, Kuwait $100,000, and various tobacco companies more than $1m."

The Congressional Club

"Helms literally became a nexus of the burgeoning movement, pushing conservative causes, linking conservative politicians up with wealthy donors and amassing more power than many Senators within memory."

"Together with Raleigh attorney and long-time friend Tom Ellis, Helms turned to direct-mail specialist Richard Viguerie." In 1990, Washington correspondent Charles Babington wrote that, "Helms's direct-mail operation 'remains among the nation's biggest, boldest, and wealthiest.'"

The National Congressional Club (NCC) was a political action committee formed by Tom Ellis in 1973 and controlled by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC). It was originally established as the Congressional Club of North Carolina to cover Helms' campaign debt for the Senatorial elections of 1973. It was described as a "vast and sophisticated enterprise." As a political fundraiser, Helms had few rivals. The National Congressional Club, had "computerized lists of hundreds of thousands of contributors" and a "state-of-the-art" direct-mail operation that raised millions for Helms and other conservative candidates. Almost seventy percent of its regular contributors were from outside North Carolina.

Richard Viguerie, who worked in direct marketing and advertising since 1965 with companies like American Target Advertising, was dubbed as the "funding father" of American conservatives. He was the executive secretary of the conservative youth group Young Americans for Freedom in 1961. In the mid-to-late 1970s, Viguerie was the architect of the revolutionary national direct-mail operations; direct-mail was quickly adopted by the insurgent conservative movement.

Helms "political organization, the Congressional Club, became remarkably successful at raising millions of dollars and in operating a highly sophisticated, media-driven political machine. The Congressional Club also provided a source of national standing and power for Helms." Bu 1995, Helms' political action committee was the most successful in raising funds in the United States at that time. It offered Helm's a freedom from restraints under which most politicians operated. He did not need the Republican Party to raise money nor did he depend on the media to reach voters. The NCC became known for "what critics called 'attack ads'-television ads that emphasized presumably negative aspects of an opponent's record."

Helms wrote letters used in direct mail solicitations requesting support for one of the most ultraconservative organizations of the New Right, the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC), which was founded in 1975 by conservative activists with help from Thomas F. Ellis and Richard Viguerie. In the early 1980s, NCPAC was a major contributor to the rise of Republicans and helped Ronald Reagan's successful presidential campaign. NCPAC was the first organization to use independent expenditures to bypass campaign finance restrictions. Co-founder Terry Dolan described the tone of the solicitations, "The shriller you are, the better it is to raise money."

Retirement

"Few senators in the modern era have done more to buck the tide of progress and enlightenment than Mr. Helms." Robert Pastor, former U.S. ambassadorship to Panama, commented that, "nothing Jesse Helms did in his entire career will enhance America's national security more than his retirement." Helms Pastor was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1994 to serve as the Ambassador to Panama.

Critics

Fake news

"The Mexican loan package is complex, but the senator has sidetracked the entire debate by turning a nonfact into a central issue. "No conditions" becomes a refrain throughout the hearing, creating a false impression of Mexican deadbeats trying to get something for nothing from American taxpayers. Weintraub spends the rest of the morning on the defensive, refuting something that no one had any reason to believe was true in the first place."

— Eric Bates. June 1995. Mother Jones

Journalist Eric Bates described, in an article in Mother Jones, described a 'classic Helms maneuver' in regards to a proposed $40 billion in loan guarantees from the US to Mexico that Helms opposed. After Sidney Weintraub of the Center for Strategic and International Studies completed his testimony about the loan, Helms asked him, "Would you feel differently if you were informed" that the president of Mexico [had] declared in a press conference ... that he [would] accept no conditions on this loan?" At first, Weintraub agreed with Helms, that if President Zedillo would accept no conditions of any kind, he would reject the loan. But then Helms admits, he does not actually have any proof of that. "Now wait a minute. The report last night was flat-out, and I have been trying to trace it, and I am told the Associated Press moved it and then pulled it back. I'm not sure about that. I have only a report from the British Broadcasting Corporation, which has various statements made by President Zedillo, and we are attempting to ascertain what the facts are." Immediately Helms' aides provided reporters with the BBC story, which actually quoted Zedillo explaining that he would 'accept no loan conditions' that would 'undermine Mexican sovereignty.'"

FIM vs CBS

On November 13, 1984, three lawyers from North Carolina - NCC Chairman Ellis, Carter Wrenn, NCC executive director, and James Palmer Cain, all political allies of Helms - formed an adhoc committee called Fairness in Media (FIM). In a 1985 article published in the Washington Post, journalists Thomas B. Edsall and David A. Vise did an in-depth review of the controversial attack on CBS conceived by Ellis "as a way to capitalize on President Reagan's landslide victory and on Helms' come-from-behind drive to win a third term in the Senate." Conservatives at the time, held a "deep, long-standing animosity" towards mainstream media. Helms had wanted to expand his activities into the corporate takeover of major media outlets, such as a network or large-circulation newspaper major media outlets. On January 10, 1985, Fairness in Media "filed papers with the SEC indicating it would encourage conservatives to buy CBS stock." Helms signature was on a million letters that the FIM sent to conservatives "asking them each to purchase at least 20 shares of CBS stock."

See also

• Jesse Helms Center