News-Record.com

Who has been North Carolina's most influential U.S. senator of the last half-century?

In case you can't remember them all:

Sam Ervin Jr., 1954-74
B. Everette Jordan, 1958-73
Jesse Helms, 1973-2003
Robert Morgan, 1975-81
John East, 1981-86
James Broyhill, 1986
Terry Sanford, 1986-93
Lauch Faircloth, 1993-99
John Edwards, 1999-2005
Elizabeth Dole, 2003-
Richard Burr, 2005-

The fondest in memory may be "Senator Sam," who played a significant role in Senate Watergate investigations during the Nixon presidency.

But in terms of impact on the state and national scene, Helms is the champion by far. He was a force in North Carolina politics and a leading figure in the rise of Southern Republicanism.

Of course, many people disliked him intensely. He never won elections by big margins. But he won, even knocking off Jim Hunt at a time when the popular two-term governor was a potential player on the national stage for the Democratic Party.

I wasn't a fan of Helms, whose politics were angry and divisive. His world view was narrow, he was a regressive embarrassment on race-relations issues, and he hated my university. But every once in a while he'd stand up and fight ferociously for a righteous cause.

Which makes the title of a new biography perfectly apt: "Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism" by former UNCG historian William A. Link.

From Link's introduction:

"This book represents an attempt to see Helms as something more than
a 'cardboard cutout.' Perhaps because of the tendency to view Helms in
ideological terms, he has been widely underestimated, misunderstood, and
even ignored by journalists and historians. During his career and after, there
has been a tendency to dismiss him as an ineffective right-wing crank. In a
gross misunderstanding, many of his opponents have ignored his facility
with language and clever argumentation -- though they have done so at their
peril. I hope to avoid the ideologically charged caricatures of the right and
left, and instead to understand and assess the impact of Helms during the
last third of the twentieth century. As such, this biography enjoys the approval
of neither side of the polarized political environment. Many of my
colleagues are astounded that anyone could abide writing such a book. On
the other hand, this book has been written without the approval of Helms
and his supporters; as mentioned, about the time that I started work on it in
earnest, his dementia prevented him from granting any interviews, nor have
I have ever met Helms."

"Righteous Warrior" seems to be getting some good reviews. I look forward to reading this biography of North Carolina's most influential U.S. senator of my lifetime.