Conservative icon Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the senator who drives liberals nuts, is inching his way toward running for reelection in 2002. Helms, 79, was once thought certain to retire. In fact, he told some friends several years ago that was his intention. Now, after recovering from knee surgery and pneumonia, he’s inclined to run again. He says he’ll decide over the summer.
Helms cites a number of reasons for seeking another term. His wife Dot “likes being here,” he says. A Democrat “might have a good chance” of capturing the seat Helms has held since 1972. But “the huge problem” if he retires is “the 50-50 thing” in the Senate. If his seat went Democratic, it might “tip the balance.” Helms says he doesn’t “want to leave the Senate in the lurch,” and by the Senate, he means Senate Republicans. “That’s very much in my mind. I don’t want the Senate to fall into the hands of ultraliberals.” The two Helms mentions are Paul Wellstone and Teddy Kennedy.
Helms has still another reason for seeking reelection — the patriotic one. “I think too much of this country to play it from a political standpoint,” he says. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to this country because of anything I did or did not do. I don’t want to sound pious now.” Absent such considerations, Helms says he’d be happy to return to North Carolina full-time. “If it didn’t make any difference what I did,” the senator says, he’d retire to his vacation home at Lake Gaston in his home state “and look at water.”
Two important players in Helms’s decision are his wife and Tom Ellis, his friend, political adviser, and fellow conservative. Helms says he won’t run again if his wife opposes it. Ellis has already made his advice known. It’s run, Jesse, run.
Helms, by the way, hasn’t mellowed in recent years. He says the Chinese, by making a stink over the downed surveillance plane, are trying to dissuade President Bush from selling high-tech military equipment to Taiwan. Come hell or high water, the senator says, Bush should give Taiwan all the military assistance it needs. On Cuba, he says the Bush administration “is going to stand with me” against normalization. On Israel, he wants the administration to support prime minister Ariel Sharon strongly. Helms likes Sharon, but admits, “I’m a Netanyahu man.”
