1990

Former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, an architect who in 1963 became the first African-American student to attend Clemson University, challenges Helms for his Senate seat.  With Democrat Gantt leading in polls one week before the election, the Helms campaign airs an ad alleging Gantt’s support for racial hiring quotas.  Helms defeats Gantt by a margin of four percentage points.

1991

Gay activists cover Helms's Alexandria, Virginia home with a giant, canvas condom on which is printed “A CONDOM TO STOP UNSAFE POLITICS.  HELMS IS DEADLIER THAN A VIRUS.”

1992

Helms undergoes quadruple bypass heart surgery, and the longtime tobacco supporter stops smoking.

Tom Ellis and the Congressional Club lead North Carolina Republican Lauch Faircloth to victory in the U.S. Senate race against incumbent Democrat Terry Sanford. 

1994

Faircloth breaks with the Congressional Club (renamed the National Conservative Club), citing its failure to retire his campaign debt.  Months later, Helms splits with the Club, claiming Ellis and Wrenn were abusing his name "like a cow to be milked" with scare-tactic fundraising.  Helms is also upset about the firing of his daughter, Jane, as principal of St. Timothy's Episcopal School in Raleigh, where both Ellis and Wrenn are board members.

On November 8, Republicans sweep both houses of Congress and Helms assumes the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  Later that month, Helms says on CNN that President Clinton is not fit to be commander in chief, and tells a News & Observer reporter that Clinton “better have a bodyguard” if he visits a North Carolina military base. 

1995

Helms holds up 30 ambassadorial nominees as leverage for his plan to fold three independent, international agencies into the State Department.  He continues to single-handedly hold up the ratification of treaties and most foreign aid.  "It costs the government more money to give it away than they give away," he states.

Helms cosponsors the Helms-Burton bill, which strips the president’s power to lift the trade embargo against Cuba and enables American citizens to sue foreign companies in U.S. court for trafficking in property nationalized during the 1959 rebellion.

Patsy Clarke, whose late husband was a consultant to Helms and whose son died of AIDS in 1994, writes Helms asking him not to pass judgment on AIDS victims.  Helms writes back that he wished Mark “had not played Russian roulette in his sexual activity,” and later is quoted saying the disease is the result of “deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct.”  Clarke and Eloise Vaughn, also the mother of an AIDS victim, establish “MAJIC: Mothers Against Jesse in Congress” to oppose Helms’s bid for a fifth term in 1996.

1996

Helms attempts to cut AIDS research funding and to mandate testing for health workers with public disclosure of results.

Despite having severed his relationship with Tom Ellis, Carter Wrenn and the Congressional Club, Helms defeats Harvey Gantt in a rematch of their 1990 race by a margin of 53-46%.

1997

When former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, a Republican, is nominated to be ambassador to Mexico, Helms refuses to allow the Foreign Relations Committee to consider Weld because of his advocacy of legalized medicinal marijuana.

Helms delays Senate ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, demanding for his support a revival of the Strategic Defense Initiative and reorganization of the State Department. 

1998

Helms blocks U.S. support for the International Criminal Court, objecting to the possibility of American military personnel being tried by foreign judges without U.S. constitutional protections. 

1999

Helms leads the successful effort to defeat the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.  It is the first time an arms control treaty is rejected by the U.S. Senate, a harsh blow to President Clinton’s foreign policy legacy.

Helms softens his anti-United Nations position with the Helms-Biden Act, in which he drops his hold on almost a billion dollars in back American dues to the U.N. in exchange for reductions in its staff and the U.S. share of its budget.