WWJ Newsradio 950 - Former Sen. Jesse Helms Dies At 86

Traffic: 1 Incidents

Weather:

29°F

01:06pm, 12/04/08

Local News

Posted: Friday, 04 July 2008 11:52AM

Former Sen. Jesse Helms Dies At 86

Wingate, NC (CBS) -- Jesse Helms, the five-term Republican Senator from North Carolina, has died, CBS News has confirmed. He was 86.

Helms died of natural causes in Raleigh at 1:15 this morning, according to the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, North Carolina.

Helms built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during his decades in Congress. He was slowed in later age by a variety of illnesses, including a bone disorder, prostate cancer and heart problems.

Helms retired from the Senate in 2003.

CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss called Helms a politician who knew no middle ground, one of the most conservative men to ever sit in the Senate - and proud of it. Bigger than life in his native North Carolina, he sometimes seemed that way to his political enemies in Washington, too.

Like most Southern politicians of his era, Helms began as a segregationist but later tried to reach out to African Americans.

But on most issues, he never gave an inch.

For 30 years Helms was the voice of the right in the Senate, battling communism, feminism and affirmative action. "Senator No," as he was sometimes known, cut funding for the United Nations and for what he considered "dirty art."

Helms reached the height of his power as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where his distrust extended from the Russians to our own State Department.

The U.N.-basher was never shy about wielding power.

Richard Holbrooke, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President Clinton, said of Helms, "I have seen him kill nominations. I've seen him kill treaties. But all I can say is he is true to his principles."

Helms spent years fighting to keep the Panama Canal, and was notorious for blocking ambassadorial appointments of people he didn't approve of … and it didn't matter if they were nominated by a Republican president.

Former Senate leader Bob Dole described Helms' style: "He sticks to his guns and he doesn't mind firing them, either."

Towards the end of his Senate career, Helms was asked how he'd like to be remembered:

"I would like for them to say, 'Well, he did the best he could.' If they say that, that'd be enough."

Photo: Former Senator Jesse Helms, R-N.C,, seen here in a 1999 file photo, was known for his firebrand style that ensured both popularity among his constituents and controversy on Capitol Hill. (AP)