The Right-wing crusaders from North Carolina

Press, 16 July 1983, Page 26

The Right-wing crusaders from North Carolina

NZPA staff correspondent Washington Mr Jesse Helms and Mr John East, both Republicans, and both of North Carolina, are the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of the United States Senate.

They are arch-conserva-tives who have won the two Senate seats in a basically Democratic state — the ow’lish Mr Helms, aged 61, and his protege, the wheel-chair-bound Mr East, aged 51.

Both are trying to block ratification of treaties with four South Pacific nations — Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, and the New Zealand dependency of the Tokelaus — because they fear that most of the island leaders are so unsophisticated that they will not realise the righteousness of the American cause and will turn bases over to Soviet surface warships and submarines.

They are basing their arguments on ancient American claims to sovereignty over 26 islands in the groups, even though the Ad-

ministration has dismissed these as specious and the Defence Department has declared that it sees no forseeable use for American military bases on them. The two senators will almost certainly be voted down by their colleagues when the treaties come before the full Senate for ratification.

The impression from testimony at committee hearings is that they regard these nations as far-flung American possessions in the Pacific petitioning for their freedom, rather than looking at them as new nations trying to clear the books of historical double-entries and clear up fishing and maritime rights. Mr Helms was elected in 1972 as the first Republican to represent North Carolina in the Senate in this century. The southern, tobaccogrowing state is a “801 l Weevil” one, officially 74 per cent Democratic but regarded as being 50 per cent conservative, which tends to make distinctions between Democrats and Republicans running for high office paper thin.

Party discipline in the United States is not nearly as tight as in New Zealand, and coalitions between Republican and Democratic factions can form and dissolve rapidly. Southern 801 l Weevils are Democrats who support Republicans and tip a Senate or House vote the conservative way. Mr Helms, the son of a policeman who became police and fire chief of Monroe (population 12,600), is a former Democrat who has been variously described as “the archangel of true believers of the Right,” “keeper of the Right-wing faith,” and “this new hero of the Far Right.”

As chairman of the Senate’s agriculture committee, he is also a thorn in New Zealand's hide because of his understandable support for America’s (and North Carolina’s) dairy farmers against all comers. That means he often argues positions that the New Zealand dairy industry sees as unreasonable and liable to hurt its legitimate interests. Mr Helms is a powerful man, is close to President

Reagan and has totted up an impressive list of political 1.0.U.S - he was put forward by the Republican far Right as a vice-presi-dential candidate in 1976 — but his influence is waning as fellow senators see the likelihood that a Democrat will beat him next year when he runs for his third six-year term in the Senate. Mr Helms is a tall, stoopshouldered man who wears horn-rim glasses and who believes, according to some accounts, that President Reagan is not conservative enough. He is the leader of an unofficial coalition of Rightwing conservatives who crusade against abortion laws, against the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, against busing laws designed to integrate schools and for free-market conservatism.

Both he and Mr East, a freshman senator, are prepared to go it alone, together, against the other 98 senators. Mr Helms spoke for 40 minutes against the confirmation of Caspar Weinberger as Secretary of Defence, saying that Mr Weinberger, generally regarded as a hawk, was not prepared to make the necessary clean break with policies that had led to United States military decline.

When the roll-call came the vote was 97-2. Senators Helms and East voting against. The “New York Times” described Mr Helms as arriving in Washington as a political Don Quixote, tilting at the windmills of change and thundering apocalyptic imprecations against everything from big government to the alien forces he felt were threatening America with moral decay, economic doom and military disaster. Mr Helms, whose pet projects are mostly potentially explosive, like his support for reintroducing prayers in schools, compared himself with the Dutch boy who plugged the dyke with his finger. One of his power bases is the Congressional Club, an organisation he created to pay off $U t S9O,Oi;O in campaign debts from his initial 1972 election to the Senate. The club has since become a national organisation to aid selected Rightwing candidates, with a fulltime staff of 30 and a computerised mailing list of 350,000 contributors. The club raised $4.2 million for Mr Reagan in 1980, but the White House tends to regard Senator Helms with a great deal of trepidation. “Newsweek” has described him as having a personal political machine and a loving transcontinental following, a man (often described as courtly) who could charm a cat off a shrimp boat. “U.S. News and World Report” has described him as a maverick, respected for his Parliamentary skills but often irritating fellow senators with his singlemindedness and stridency.

The “Washington Post” compared him with an avenging angel of old-time religion, a guru, and a congressional guerrilla fighter. Inside the Senate, the “Post” said, he was regarded as everything from “a dedicated crusader to a loose cannon.” Mr Helms was bore a Southern Baptist and became a “born again” Christian on a campaign flight in 1978. He is still a Sunday school teacher, and a deacon.

He worked for 12 years as a television commentator, railing against network

••bias” and filing some 500 complaints against the networks over 12 years. He used his air time to complain about “Negro agitators." about "powder puff, by-vour-leave pats on the wrist that return criminals to the street an hour or so after thev have been arrested," and inadequate pay for firemen and police “breaking up mobs and putting out fires set by arsonists." Other complaints now include the fact that the United States gave up its rights over the Panama Canal, and moves to restrict the possession of handguns. The challenge to Mr Helms next year is likely to come from Mr James Hunt, North Carolina’s popular Democratic governor, but if Mr Helms loses, it will not be for lack of money. The Congressional Club raised $7 million for his campaign in 1978. and is expected to better that next year. The club also raised big money for Mr East’s election to the Senate for the first time in 1980. Mr East's office in the Senate is dominated by a photograph of himself, Mr Helms, and Mr Tom Ellis, the chairman of the Congressional Club. Mr East, who was struck by poliomyelitis at the age of 24, when he had just gone into law school after a stint with the Marines at Camp Lejeune, was the first congressman to arrive in Washington in a wheelchair. He did most of his campaigning on television, and many of his constituents and future colleagues were not aware he was disabled. Senate builders added an electric lift to the chamber and a restroom for the handicapped, but he is unable to ride the miniature underground railway system which links the Capital with nearby congressional buildings, and wheels his own way (or is pushed) from his office to the Senate. Lobbyists for the disabled have got short shift from him, however; he dismisses his handicap, saying people in his position should try to put their lives back together and be productive rather than trying to badger more money out of the Government. Mr East is a cerebral man, a keen debater who can cut his opponents to shreds, but so closely allied to North Carolina’s senior senator that he has been described as “Helms on wheels,” a nickname he took as a compliment. Mr East, who is married and a father of two daughters, was a professor of political science at the East Carolina University before his election to the Senate. He says, of his relationship to Mr Helms, that !T feel, over time, I shall develop my own identity.”

His votes, meanwhile, follow Mr Helms’s, and he stepped on toes last year when, as chairman of the Judiciary Sub-committee on Separation of Powers, he scheduled only those witnesses who agreed with his (and Mr Helms’s) views on abortion to speak on an anti-abortion bill Mr Helms had proposed — a slip attributed to inexperience. The “Los Angeles Times” went so far as to describe Mr East, “often hurling his intellect like a medicine ball in the gut, knocking opponents senseless,” as having earned the unofficial title of philosopher of the so-called New Right. It also described him, in one senatorial battle, as playing first lieutenant to Mr Helms’s four-star general.