Jesse Helms

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Helms's first full-time job after college was as a sports reporter with The Raleigh Times. During World War II, Helms served stateside as a recruiter in the United States Navy.

After the war, he pursued his twin interests of journalism and Democratic Party politics. Helms became the city news editor of The Raleigh Times. He later became a radio and television newscaster and commentator for WRAL-TV, where he hired Armistead Maupin as a reporter.

In 1950, Helms played a critical role as campaign publicity director for Willis Smith in the U.S. Senate campaign against a prominent liberal, Frank Porter Graham. Smith (a conservative Democratic lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association) portrayed Graham, who supported school desegregation, as a "dupe of communists" and a proponent of the "mingling of the races". Smith's fliers said, "Wake Up, White People", in the campaign for the virtually all-white primaries. Blacks were still mostly disfranchised in the state, because its 1900 constitutional amendment had been passed by white Democrats with restrictive voter registration and electoral provisions that effectively and severely reduced their role in electoral politics.

Smith won and hired Helms as his administrative assistant in Washington. In 1952, Helms worked on the presidential campaign of Georgia Senator Richard Russell Jr. After Russell dropped out of the presidential race, Helms returned to working for Smith. When Smith died in 1953, Helms returned to Raleigh.

From 1953 to 1960, Helms was executive director of the North Carolina Bankers Association. He and his wife set up their home on Caswell Street in the Hayes Barton Historic District, where he lived the rest of his life.

In 1957, Helms as a Democrat won his first election for a Raleigh City Council seat. He served two terms and earned a reputation as a conservative gadfly who "fought against everything from putting a median strip on Downtown Boulevard to an urban renewal project". Helms disliked his tenure on the council, feeling all the other members acted as a private club and that Mayor William G. Enloe was a "steamroller". In 1960, Helms worked on the unsuccessful primary gubernatorial campaign of I. Beverly Lake Sr., who ran on a platform of racial segregation. Lake lost to Terry Sanford, who ran as a racial moderate willing to implement the federal policy of school integration. Helms felt forced busing and forced racial integration caused animosity on both sides and "proved to be unwise".

In 1960, Helms joined the Raleigh-based Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC) as the executive vice-president, vice chairman of the board, and assistant chief executive officer. His daily CBC editorials on WRAL-TV, given at the end of each night's local news broadcast in Raleigh, made Helms famous as a conservative commentator throughout eastern North Carolina.

Helms's editorials featured folksy anecdotes interwoven with conservative views against "the civil rights movement, the liberal news media, and anti-war churches", among many targets. He referred to The News and Observer, his former employer, as the "Nuisance and Disturber" for its promotion of liberal views and support for African-American civil rights activities. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which had a reputation for liberalism, was also a frequent target of Helms's criticism. He is said to have referred to the university as "The University of Negroes and Communists" despite a lack of evidence, and suggested a wall be erected around the campus to prevent the university's liberal views from "infecting" the rest of the state. Helms said the civil rights movement was infested by Communists and "moral degenerates". He described the federal program of Medicaid as a "step over into the swampy field of socialized medicine".

Commenting on the 1963 protests and March on Washington during the Civil Rights Movement, Helms stated, "The negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." He later wrote, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are facts of life which must be faced."

He was at Capitol Broadcasting Company until he filed for the Senate race in 1972.

Helms announced his candidacy for a seat in the United States Senate in 1972. His Republican primary campaign was managed by Thomas F. Ellis, who would later be instrumental in Ronald Reagan's 1976 campaign and also become the chair of the National Congressional Club. Helms took the Republican primary, winning 92,496 votes, or 60.1%, in a three-candidate field. Meanwhile, Democrats retired the ailing Senator B. Everett Jordan, who lost his primary to Congressman Nick Galifianakis. The latter represented the "new politics" of voters who included the young, African Americans voting since federal legislation removed discriminatory restrictions, and anti-establishment activists, who were based in and around the urban Research Triangle and Piedmont Triad. Although Galifianakis was a "liberal" by North Carolina standards, he opposed busing to achieve integration in schools.

Polls put Galifianakis well ahead until late in the campaign, but Helms, facing all but certain defeat, hired a professional campaign manager, F. Clifton White, giving him dictatorial control over campaign strategy. While Galifianakis avoided mention of his party's presidential candidate, the liberal George McGovern, Helms employed the slogans "McGovernGalifianakis – one and the same", "Vote for Jesse. Nixon Needs Him" and "Jesse: He's One of Us", an implicit play suggesting his opponent's Greek heritage made him somehow less "American". Helms won the support of numerous Democrats, especially in the conservative eastern part of the state. Galifianakis tried to woo Republicans by noting that Helms had earlier criticized Nixon as being too left-wing.

In a taste of things to come, money poured into the race. Helms spent a record $654,000, much of it going toward carefully crafted television commercials portraying him as a soft-spoken mainstream conservative. In the final six weeks of the campaign, Helms outspent Galifianakis three-to-one. Though the year was marked by Democratic gains in the Senate, Helms won 54 percent of the vote to Galifianakis's 46 percent. He was elected as the first Republican senator from the state since 1903, before senators were directly elected, and when the Republican Party stood for a different tradition. Helms was helped by Richard Nixon's gigantic landslide victory in that year's presidential election; Nixon carried North Carolina by 40 points.

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