| Part II of Biographical Conversations begins with Helms discussing some of the issues he discussed on his Viewpoints show at WRAL-TV. Host John Bason asks about his views on desegregation, in particular, to which Helms responds that he feels desegregation should have been encouraged and modeled rather than enacted by law. While he disagreed with the terms of our involvement in the Vietnam War, he stood by the soldiers who fought and expresses repulsion against many of the protests.
Helms was a registered Democrat until he took his daughter to register to vote and noticed her registering Republican. He switched to the Republican Party, and he later ran for Senate on a Republican platform. Because North Carolina had never elected a Republican senator, Helms was certain he would lose the Senate race; in fact, A.J. Fletcher agreed to give him his job back after he took a leave of absence to campaign. However, he won the race—the same year that President Nixon won reelection.
Throughout his Senate career, Helms relied on his faith in God, and cites many instances where it helped him get through tough situations. Shortly after Helms won the 1972 election, a group of conservative students formed the National Congressional Club to assist with Helms’ campaign debt, and Helms states that the Club has been instrumental in financing many Republican campaigns, including Ronald Reagan’s Presidential campaign.
Senator Helms was the first senator to support Ronald Reagan, and although Reagan lost the 1976 primary, he emerged as quite a strong candidate in 1980. Some people begged Helms to join Reagan as his vice president, but Helms says that he was interested only in the Senate.
Helms cites the 1984 reelection campaign against Governor Jim Hunt as the toughest campaign he ran—particularly because he thought Governor Hunt would beat him. It was one of the most expensive senatorial campaigns to date, and it became quite a bitter campaign in many people’s recollections. Even so, Helms and Hunt remained friends afterwards and worked on many issues together, agreeing to disagree.
Senator Helms speaks about the role that he felt “bloc voting” may have played in the Harvey Gantt campaign and states that he left the Congressional Club in the early 1990s.
As senator, Helms states that he has always tried to stop what he sees as “bad legislation” and used the Senate rules to attempt to block nominations and legislation, even when he was the only one against them. He closes with his musings about some of the Presidents under whom he served, particularly Jimmy Carter and George Bush.
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