Word: raleighs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this was television, he never crossed the line into ugliness or outright racism?as some Tobacco Network listeners seem to remember he did in his early radio talks (of which no transcripts are known to exist). "There is no question about his having been a segregationist," says one old Raleigh newspaper hand. "And he says he hasn't changed his views on segregation." Tom Ellis, 61, a Raleigh lawyer and Helms' most powerful political sponsor, defends his man. "He hates the K.K.K. and those people. Is that what racism is all about?" Asked why none of the 112-person Helms...
...view of one longtime Helms watcher in Raleigh, the son does not entirely erase the sins of the father "Jesse adopted a handicapped son," says the man. "It cost him a lot of doctor's bills. He'd give the coat off his back to help someone lying in the street, but he's not going to vote for food stamps." Indeed, during his first Senate term, Helms voted against funds for the handicapped...
...learned, principally, how to cause a ruckus. Helms was never seduced by the Senate's clubbiness. It was as if he had crated up his Raleigh TV scripts, driven five hours north, and started pitching those editorials into the Senate hopper. If anyone took notice, it was generally with a snickering glance: Helms the flailing buffoon, a crossbreed of Dickens' Pecksniff and Fred Allen's Claghorn, full of futile cracker righteousness. Yet in Aide John Carbaugh's phrase, Helms "planted the flag": his hopeless proposals sometimes forced Senators to take stands on issues they would have just as soon avoided...
While it once seemed that Helms would be a strange, one-term evanescence, he began to attract a following. He was never sniping away just for the citizens of Raleigh and Asheville and Monroe. By his extreme doggedness on one issue or another?busing, feminism, gold, guns, always abortion?he won the esteem of single-minded sects all over the U.S. Says one first-term Senator who understands the effectiveness of that strategy: "Every person in the Senate knows Jesse could unloose that barrage of letters. It makes them think twice...
Whatever it is, Helms would rather do it himself. He fries his own breakfasts (eggs, bacon and biscuits), types his own letters in a spare?truly spare?basement room in Raleigh, and refuses to be chauffeured. He drives his own anonymous 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, in which he listens exclusively to what he agrees is "Muzak music...