This is a posting recalling my time covering Jesse Helms. To folks who consider themselves conservative and who consider me liberal, this might surprise you.

 

In 1984 I was fortunate to cover Jesse Helms’ senatorial re-election campaign. I was working at WCTI-TV 12 in New Bern, NC.

 

Jesse beat the popular Democratic Governor Jim Hunt. It was a nasty campaign. The worst example was Jesse’s henchmen concocting stories that Hunt was connected to pedophilia.

 

Despite that, I write somewhat glowingly about Jesse and that campaign in my book that teaches you what media bias is and how to overcome it.

 

Jesse Helms, the former GOP senator from North Carolina, taught me to win the information war when I covered his 1984 re-election campaign. He was considered a myopic, backwoods politician by most people from the Northeast. He was calling the New York Times liberal and dishonest long before most right-wingers did. But when I

covered Jesse, he was gracious, answering all my questions without rancor. Why? I was a local television reporter and attached directly to the audience he needed—the conservative, white, Christian, North Carolina voter. Without them, he would never be elected. Without them, he would never have his place on the national and international stage. He didn’t have to be president of the United States to put his stamp on the world; he was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Jesse could make enemies with all the reporters from the Northeast, but he had to make friends with me. And he made you think having a beer with him would be a pleasure, although I never found out. But when I told my friends back north about the “other” Jesse Helms, they thought I had gone haywire.

 

Granted, history will record that Jesse was a firm opponent to civil rights laws. Was he a racist? You can make arguments both ways. You can also say that Jesse engineered the law that stops foreign aid to countries that allow abortions; an arrogant and short-sighted law that has only increased the world’s population and hunger problems.

 

However, here’s what I can say about Jesse. He was always true to his constituents. He followed their beliefs. Sure, his constituents might have collectively been racists and uneducated religious zealots. But in the purest sense of being a politician, Jesse allowed their voices to be heard on a national and, in some cases, an international stage.

 

Unlike too many politicians today, who pass laws for narrow-minded big money interests, Jesse, for the most part, solely worked for his constituents – even if it meant going against his own party which he did on many occasions.

 

One reason he could: Jesse had no illusions about becoming President. As a result, his focus was entirely on the majority of voters in post World War II North Carolina, which was still white, rural, tobacco country, not yet the modern state that would attract high-tech business and retiring baby-boomers from the North.

 

So yes, I liked Jesse because, simply put, he was easy to cover. First, he was always a great sound bite. I knew a story with Jesse on-camera was going to be a good one. Second, many upward striving politicians really make journalists work because they’re constantly changing their positions. That’s why we hear so many flip-flop charges on a national level.

 

Look at Joe Lieberman. He was nearly Vice President and yet six years later he could barely win his party primary in Connecticut. Why? He was no longer a Connecticut politician, but a national politician who had lost focus on the people who were putting him in office.

 

You can say the same about Obama and McCain who will change their positions over the next five months. I’m not saying they’re right or wrong. You make that decision: just understand where they’ve been and who they’ve been serving.

 

Some of you may be thinking I went soft on Jesse because he was nice to me. Well, you have to respect him for that. Think about it. Jesse got a fair shake from a reporter who was originally from the north and who graduated from a typical liberal, northeast college. Jesse is a good teacher when it comes to handling the media. Now let me defend myself. I was no push-over. Jim Hunt, a very good politician in his own right, got his chance to take shots at Jesse, too.

 

However, I think my respect for Jesse comes from the way he played politics. He was Dick Butkus with a southern drawl. His public brawn camouflaged his superior political intellect.

 

Politics, for me, is a contact-collision sport that is not for the faint of heart. I want the candidates to fight. Of course, we want a fair fight. For example, I may have disagreed with the Swiftboating of John Kerrey, but I believe those folks had every right to voice their opinions. First, that’s the way the laws are set up. I’m not saying they’re good laws since they seem to help incumbents more. Second, the Swiftboaters showed that Kerrey’s campaign failed to respond to something that was so important to voters.

 

In the current campaign, I also have no problems with Barack Obama pulling out of the federal campaign finance laws. The McCain campaign will call him a flip-flopper; they have every right. They also know that Obama has the financial advantage. Obama knows he’s going to need that extra money to quickly respond to the 2008 version of Swiftboaters.

 

I even think Jesse would have agreed with that.

 

---