OBITUARY: Conservative former senator Helms dead at 86 (Roundup)

By Frank Fuhrig and Pat Reber Jul 4, 2008, 15:11 GMT

Washington - Former conservative Senator Jesse Helms, a staunch backer of racial apartheid and one-time chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, died Friday, a conservative think tank confirmed.

Helms, 86, who represented North Carolina in the Senate for 30 years, led the resurgence of Republican conservatism in the US South as he opposed civil rights moves such as voting rights guarantees and the designation of Martin Luther King Day as a national holiday.

His death came on July 4th, the day Americans celebrate their independence from Britain.

Few other figures represented such a red flag to liberals as Helms, who forged the movement that unseated centre-left Democrats from their traditional stronghold in the South.

From President Richard Nixon's election in 1968 onwards, Southern white voters have been a key player in putting Republicans in the White House even as the country moved to guarantee civil and voting rights to African Americans and other minorities, largely under centre-left Democratic initiative.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, an African-American, has signalled his determination to reclaim the South for Democrats on November 4, but analysts are skeptical.

They point to the fact that black voters already have high voter turnout, which has brought them success at the local and state level but not changed the Republican tide for presidential elections in the South.

The Heritage Foundation, one of the country's most conservative think tanks, hailed Helms as a 'truly great American and champion of freedom.'

Heritage President Ed Feulner called him 'one of the most consequential figures of the 20th century.'

'Along with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, he helped establish the conservative movement and became a powerful voice for free markets and free people,' he said. 'The defeat of Soviet communism and the rise of Ronald Reagan would not have happened without his intrepid leadership at decisive times.'

Helms served in the Senate from 1972 to 2002, retiring the same year that another of the country's last surviving segregationists in US national politics, Senator Strom Thurmond, stepped down.

Thurmond died in 2003.

Helms was politically active as a segregationist Democrat until he switched to the Republicans in 1970, and was elected to the Senate in 1972. During his 30-year Senate career, Helms forged an iron-clad reputation as an unyielding conservative opposed to abortion and affirmative action for minorities.

For a generation, he was consistently the favourite negative icon for the Democratic Party, which often invoked him as a spectre to open the purses of campaign donors. Just invoking Jesse Helms could draw hissing and boos at partisan rallies.

He had an international reputation for promoting a hard line against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and for railing against the United Nations, foreign aid and immigration.

Helms had contentious re-elections; in two challenges by a black mayor, the campaigns were marred by bitter racial overtones. But his unassuming style and unfailingly polite manner kept Helms popular with politically moderate North Carolinians.