To the Right, March!

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half-inch above his bifocals. The effect is of a man always listening, or on the verge of some great surprise. It may be a habit nurtured by Viewpoint. His eyes would flit down to the typescript and stay too long. Then Helms would remember his 98,000 viewers and look up with a start. He does not smile easily, and his on-camera manner had the slightly sweaty earnestness that TV editorialists, North and South, exude by instinct. Unlike the rest of the breed, however, Helms was rarely bland.

In one editorial (transcripts are on file at WRAL and the University of North Carolina) Helms expressed a recurring paranoia about the nation's journalistic Establishment: he called Walter Cronkite a "hysterical crybaby" who "has been a participant in a vast ultraliberal mechanism tirelessly dedicated to brainwashing the American public." He was on to welfare parasitism years before the Great Society: "Extreme care should be taken that public assistance is not made a mockery by those who would freeload off their fellow man." In 1965: "The civil rights movement, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King calls it, has had an uncommon number of moral degenerates leading the parade. The Negroes of America have a Congress that would tomorrow enact Webster's Dictionary into law with a civil rights label on it." Even 17th century metaphysicians were not safe. Helms chastised a state university teacher for assigning Andrew Marvell's poem To His Coy Mistress. The instructor was removed.

Helms' transcripts are packed with hyperbole and meanspiritedness. Yet, perhaps because this was television, he never crossed the line into ugliness or outright racism—as some Tobacco Network listeners seem to remember he did in his early radio talks (of which no transcripts are known to exist). "There is no question about his having been a segregationist," says one old Raleigh newspaper hand. "And he says he hasn't changed his views on segregation." Tom Ellis, 61, a Raleigh lawyer and Helms' most powerful political sponsor, defends his man. "He hates the K.K.K. and those people. Is that what racism is all about?" Asked why none of the 112-person Helms staff is black, Ellis answers: "Not a whole pile have applied."

Helms' daughter Nancy, then 21, talked him into switching from the Democratic Party to the Republican in 1970. "A little child shall lead you," he says of that conversion. "A lot of people thought I'd lost my mind." The next year, Ellis persuaded him to run for the Senate seat of Democrat Everett Jordan. Ellis also arranged for Helms to have his WRAL job back if he lost. That did not seem necessary. The TV broadcasts had made his one of the most familiar faces in the state. Richard Nixon, whom he had once accused on TV of buckling to the Commies, agreed to campaign for him. "I didn't want to go through the meat grinder," Helms says of his reluctance to run. "I just couldn't see myself having any great personal appeal to the voters." His opponent was Democrat Nick Galifianakis, a moderate U.S. Representative whose Greek name was made the target of subtle innuendo. Helms' slogan: JESSE HELMS: HE'S ONE OF US. He won, 54% to 46%. Helms went to Washington with big hopes and a modest bankroll. His recorded share of Capitol Broadcasting was