THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1994 TAG: 9412250059
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
Jesse Helms is ready to take over as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but if the panel's senior Republican wants a long run at shepherding America's international policy, he'll have to get re-elected in 1996.
If Helms decides to accept a rematch with Harvey Gantt, the Charlotte architect he beat in 1990, political handicappers say the next Gantt-Helms race will make Helms' historically nasty 1984 Senate fight with N.C. Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. look like a pony ride.
That $26-million Hunt-Helms contest was billed then as the costliest - and dirtiest - U.S. Senate race on record.
Gantt is already in the running for 1996, but Helms is not expected to announce his plans until next year.
``I'm pacing myself,'' Helms said in a wide-ranging interview last week. At 73, he was striding long-legged as a colt in his Raleigh office as though he never had a quadruple heart bypass and valve replacement surgery in a nine-hour operation in 1992.
Whether it's the transplanted cardiac arteries, or the sweet smell of all those voters out there in the far off fields of 1996, Helms already seems to be snorting and pawing the ground in anticipation of at least one last hurrah.
In the long run, the only person who is likely to stop Helms from running is ``Dot'' - the former Dorothy Jane Coble, of Raleigh - whom he married 52 years ago when both were on the news staff of the Raleigh News & Observer.
Friends say Dot - never ``Dottie'' - doesn't think much of exposing her husband's retreaded heart to the speedbumps of another election campaign. The senator, like Strom Thurmond, doesn't seem to notice any longer shadows in the late afternoon of his life.
``There's never been one moment of doubt for me that Senator Helms will run again in '96 if he's physically able to do so,'' said Gantt last week in Charlotte.
Last summer's Republican campaigns gave Helms the physical ``pacing'' he sought to test his stamina. For weeks before the GOP triumphs last month, Helms traveled around North Carolina and the nation to help GOP candidates.
In the 3rd Congressional District that includes the Outer Banks, Helms was a wheelhorse speaker for Walter Jones Jr., a Republican by adoption, who beat a four-term Democrat for a seat in the U.S. House.
``We had to run to keep up with the senator,'' said a Jones staffer who is half Helms' age.
There are moments when Helms sounds almost wistful, aware that he might for a first time be defeated.
``I don't know why some of my colleagues worry so much about losing,'' said Helms, ``Some of them are afraid to introduce a bill for fear it'll cost them votes.
``If I lose, I could just walk away from it.''
A race against Gantt, who is black, will consolidate just about every political enemy Helms has ever had, and his supporters sense that he feels obligated to win this hardest fight of his life.
To Democratic liberals everywhere, the destruction of Jesse Helms in 1996 must be one of the first steps in winning back Democratic self-respect after the national humbling of Nov. 8.
Helms-watchers say the senator now feels he's the only Republican candidate who can beat Harvey Gantt in '96. And that makes it personal. As in all of Helms' political fights, there's a special needle in Gantt's challenge.
By Helms' standards, Gantt didn't follow the rules of the game in the 1990 Senate race that Helms won with 53 percent of the vote.
``He had telephone banks of homosexuals - whole banks of phones - working against me,'' Helms has said.
Helms doesn't mind fighting bare-knuckled, but he has his own ideas about what constitutes fighting dirty. In Helms' book, a political opponent isn't playing fair if she or he leads a cohort of gay telephonists into battle.
The forces behind Gantt might not be as cutting, however, as the loss of an important Helms ally - the old Congressional Club.
The Democratic National Committee will probably help Gantt with all of the money and zeal that The Congressional Club used to lavish on Helms.
The Congressional Club was founded in 1973 by Thomas F. Ellis, a conservative Raleigh lawyer who created it to pay off Helms' campaign debts after he won his first Senate term in 1972.
Ellis and Helms, then a right-wing radio reporter in Raleigh, had teamed up to help a Raleigh lawyer named Willis Smith beat Frank Graham, onetime head of the University of North Carolina, in a decisive Democratic second Senate primary in 1950. When Smith won the general election and went to the Senate, he took Helms with him as an administrative assistant.
Ellis looked far into the future and saw young Jesse Alexander Helms as a rising man for all conservative reasons. When the Democrats ran Nick Galifianakis, the son of Greek immigrants, for the Senate in 1972, Ellis persuaded Helms to run against him.
``Vote for Jesse Helms - He's One Of Us'' said campaign placards that successfully played up Helms' somewhat older U.S. origins.
Helms won. And Ellis went on to make The Congressional Club a stunningly successful political support group and money-raising organization.
In 1984, for the U.S. Senate race against Jim Hunt, Ellis had no trouble raising more than $15 million for Helms from conservatives all over the nation. And The Club, far ahead of other political organizations, mobilized the power of TV and radio ads, the rougher the better, as a way of swaying voters.
In an unheard-of media blitz, Helms - via The Club - painted Hunt a ``Mondale Liberal'' and several other varieties of political wimp. Not until the final weeks of the 1984 campaign did Hunt strike back with so-called ``negative advertising,'' but it was too late - Helms won with a little over 51 percent of the votes.
Not until 1990 did Hunt, previously of North Carolina's most popular Democratic leaders, feel ready to emerge again into public life. A belated third term as governor was his reward in 1990.
But something went awry between Helms and his hitherto unbeatable Congressional Club. Gantt couldn't have asked for a greater gift.
Helms publicly broke with The Club, but the reason was beclouded. Raleigh reports had it that Helms was miffed with the tone of a letter sent out by The Club.
Ellis, last week, finally revealed his version of the break.
``I'm a member of the board of St. Timothy's Episcopal School here in Raleigh,'' said Ellis.
``One of Jesse's daughters was a teacher at the school and there was a disagreement with the school principal. The only possible solution was to let both of them go, and that's what I did.''
The Congressional Club that buoyed Helms through four victorious Senate campaigns and a quarter of a century on Capitol Hill, has since been renamed the National Conservative Club.
Helms will have to create a campaign organization from scratch if he accepts the challenge from Gantt. It won't be easy. Always in the past The Congressional Club has been ready with complete staffing that kept Helms' opponents on the defensive. Behind the scenes, Tom Ellis would watch for weakness in the enemy camp. Then Jesse pounced. by CNB