New round for heavyweight Helms

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 13, 1996 | by Tiffany Danitz

North Carolina is gearing up for another notoriously expensive campaign spree as Democrats attempt to retire Sen. Jesse Helms after a quarter of a century.

Folks in the state will not be surprised to hear that once more their senatorial race will draw both national and international attention. North Carolina attorney and long-time Helms strategist Tom Ellis explains why. "Jesse's been the conservative conscience of the Senate," Ellis tells Insight. "Now, with the Republicans in the majority and Jesse chairman of the most prominent Senate committee, it takes on national and international significance."

It was the red-hot $26 million race of 1984 between incumbent Helms and popular Gov. Jim Hunt that first catapulted North Carolina politics onto the national stage. Helms, backed by the National Conservative Club, spent the bulk of the money--$17 million, a far cry from his 1972 campaign, which Ellis estimates cost somewhere around $300,000.

The 1990 race against Gantt cost a net $15 million, much of it originating out of state, and 1996 will see similar sums raised outside North Carolina. Charlie Sanders, a Democratic hopeful and former chief executive officer of Glaxo Inc., has raised 75 percent of his war chest outside of the state. Gantt follows with 65 percent and Helms with 60 percent.

Isn't it odd that nonvoters are willing to put up such enormous sums for a Senate race? "It is odd except when Jesse Helms runs for the Senate," says Ran Coble, executive director of the North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research in Raleigh. But even with all that money floating around, it is the voters who make the ultimate decision. As the Democratic Party marches somberly toward the May 7 primary to determine if its standard-bearer will be businessman Sanders or the once-tried Gantt, Democrats supporting both will not be so much for Sanders or Gantt as against Helms. Coble thinks Democratic voters will be asking themselves, "Who is the person best able to beat Jesse Helms in the fall?" Remember, he adds, "Helms is a guy who has never lost. He is extremely strong."

Sanders, 64, may be the Democrats' best hope. The party already has swung and missed with Hunt, its strongest candidate, and Gantt, its best black candidate. Sanders, who projects a moderately conservative business image, could be its best chance to avoid a third strike. While a CEO Sanders earned up to $2.5 million during his five years with Glaxo, leaving him a substantial nest egg. "Sanders is wealthy enough to be the first candidate to challenge Helms," Coble says. He has already raised $1 million, and lent another half-million to his campaign.

Gantt, 53, so far has raised around $1 million, of which he has contributed approximately $20,000. Thad Beyle, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, says Gantt's big advantage is that people know him. "He campaigns all around the state," Beyle says. "Sanders is kind of unknown, he didn't move here until the eighties--kind of has the newcomer status."

Helms is entering the election-year fray with $2.2 million--and an increasingly Republican North Carolina to back him. With retirees moving to the coastal and mountain regions and Northerners moving to booming areas such as Charlotte and the Research Triangle, Beyle says, there are two or three North Carolinas developing. "A lot of the urban population are from the North and they are Republican," explains Ellis. "When Jesse first ran, the electorate was 5-to-1 Democrat to Republican, now it is 2-to-1, and if you ask them to identify themselves as conservative or liberal they will say conservative."

That's exactly what Helms is banking on. He already has run a barrage of attacks against Sanders and Gantt, describing them as liberal twins. One of the spots claims: "Liberal Charlie Sanders supports racial preferences in hiring, like Harvey Gantt does. Extending health insurance to homosexual partners? Liberals Sanders and Gantt say yes."

But Jesse Helms is bigger than issues. He is a one-man crusader for those who believe in his causes, in and out of state. "The issues are always the same--conservative or liberal. They change the hot buttons from month-to-month, but Jesse will be the conservative and whoever runs against him will be the liberal. People who want a conservative will vote for Helms," Ellis says.

Where are Helms' weaknesses? At one point the Democrats thought all they had to do was outspend the senator, but 1990 proved them wrong when Gantt finished the campaign with plenty of money but no Senate seat.

Helms' problem is that this is the first election year in which he will be running without the help of Ellis, Carter Wrenn and the National Conservative Club. Some are speculating that his Achilles' heel has been exposed. "They were such a source of strength for him," says Coble. "It raises the question, what if his financial people don't do as well as the Conservative Club? He may not be able to rely on that last-minute money that he has always had in the past."