Jesse Helms Modern Conservatism and the Politics of Opposition

Jesse Helms (1921–2008) dominated the political landscape of North Carolina during the last half of the twentieth century. Though Helms’s thirty years in the US Senate are most remembered for what he opposed rather than what he achieved, he was a central figure in modern conservativism. In this concise interpretive biography, William A. Link centers Helms in the political realignment of the late twentieth-century South and the national ascendance of modern conservatism. Helms helped to lead a coalition known for advocating staunch anticommunism, opposing civil rights legislation, and denouncing liberalism. He innovated strategies for consolidating political power by using broadcast media to generate grassroots outrage. In addition, Helms’s National Congressional Club successfully raised a powerful war chest that could be used in television attack ads. Helms’s career-long penchant for race-baiting and homophobic rhetoric created many opponents, but even they acknowledged his uncanny ability to piece together slender electoral majorities in a rapidly changing nation.