July 05, 2008
RIP, Jesse Helms

Former Senator Jesse Helms is dead.


Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July.

He was 86.

[...]

In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," he said in a newspaper interview at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."

[...]

He defeated former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996 in racially tinged campaigns. In the first race, a Helms commercial showed a white fist crumbling up a job application, these words underneath: "You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority."

"The tension that he creates, the fear he creates in people, is how he's won campaigns," Gantt said several years later.


If you have nothing nice to say about someone, you shouldn't say anything. That's all I have to say.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on July 05, 2008 to National news
Comments

You could have said nothing by not posting at all. That's not what you did.

It's okay for partisan politics to take a break when someone dies. Really.

Posted by: Kevin Whited on July 5, 2008 10:54 PM

It pains me to agree with BlogHouston, but he's right...you should be ashamed.

Posted by: Ernie on July 7, 2008 9:10 PM
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