JESSE HELMS - Senator, Yes.(Jesse Helms plans to retire after the completion of his fifth term as senator)(Brief Article)

Jesse Helms announced that he will retire from the Senate next year, at the end of his fifth term. He will be missed by the conservative movement, the country, and millions of now- and once-enslaved people worldwide.

Helms, a former radio broadcaster, was first elected in 1972 at the high tide of Nixonian detente and dirigisme, and began laying the groundwork for a conservative revival. He was the first conservative politician to take advantage of the direct-mail techniques of Richard Viguerie, rallying supporters nationwide. At the same time, he worked hard on his local base, giving Ronald Reagan a desperately needed primary victory in 1976. The importance of that win cannot be overstated: After North Carolina, Reagan fought President Gerald Ford to a near draw, and positioned himself for 1980. But if Reagan had lost North Carolina, on top of five previous primary defeats, there would have been no second run in 1980. Helms saved the Reagan Revolution.

He was a fiery crusader on social issues, speaking with populist bluntness (he called the Mapplethorpe exhibit "an abyss of slime"). But the most immediate threats of the end of the 20th century were foreign, and he made his mark fighting them. Not a nomination nor an appropriation passed without his scrutiny, and his stubbornness earned him the epithet "Senator No." Some members of the foreign-policy establishment acknowledged his usefulness. Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, linked Helms with Arthur Vandenberg and Henry Cabot Lodge as a "broker between a skeptical public opinion and an insistent internationalist elite." When the brokers sign off on a deal, as when Helms finally approved American funding of a reformed U.N. ...