Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 16, 1990 TAG: 9007160022
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: RALEIGH, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
It begins with his parents, striving in a segregated South, always believing in the promise of America.
It ends with their son, the first black student at Clemson University, the first black mayor of Charlotte, now center stage in an an epic political battle: a race against Jesse Helms for the U.S. Senate.
Gantt is preaching to the choir on this night in Greensboro, to a warmly supportive convention of black members of the United Church of Christ.
But his message is one he has taken throughout this state and beyond: Helms can be beaten, North Carolina is ready to move beyond him, and Gantt, this proud product of the New South, is the man who can do it.
"We want people to get excited about this election," Gantt said. "We want them to be driven crazy by the notion that they can make a difference. We want a crusade."
Almost no other Senate race against an incumbent is as close in the public opinion polls as the battle between Helms and Gantt.
But the Helms mystique of invincibility is powerful in North Carolina; many Democrats have yet to recover from the 1984 Helms race, when former Gov. Jim Hunt, who seemed so formidable a challenger, went down to bitter defeat.
This will, indeed, be a crusade, many North Carolinians say, not just between Democrats and Republicans, but with a national audience swelled by artists outraged over Helms' campaign against the National Endowment for the Arts, by lesbians and gay men outraged over his repeated attacks on their causes, and by an army of conservatives cheering on Helms.
Gantt's challenge begins with a simple equation.
Democrats and Republicans alike say that about 40 percent to 45 percent of North Carolina's voters are adamantly opposed to Helms, with about the same fervently behind him.
The battle is for the white, working-class and middle-class voters in the middle.
As a result, Democrats want to cast the race as a simple choice: between an arch-conservative who is consumed with fringe causes and out-of-touch with the needs of the state, and a progressive workhorse devoted to education, health care, the bread-and-butter concerns of working families.
"That's where my message is: Working families need a better break," Gantt said.
Republicans want a very different race, casting it as a struggle between a principled conservative and trusted incumbent committed to cutting government spending and protecting basic values, and a tax-and-spend liberal.
The issue of arts financing will probably be the "centerpiece social issue" of the campaign, said Charles Black, an adviser to the Helms organization.
For all the furor outside North Carolina, Republicans say most voters here will side with Helms in his campaign against the National Endowment for the Arts for supporting works Helms considers obscene.
Some Democrats agree the arts issue is problematic for their cause.
"It's not boobism," said Gary Pearce, who ran Hunt's 1984 campaign.
"When people see all the needs in this country, the S&Ls, the deficit, all the problems, and you say, `Do you want $2 million of your tax dollars to go for this?,' people say, `that's ridiculous.' "
Gantt defends the endowment and opposes the restrictions on it pushed by Helms, although he adds he would, "protect minors from these types of things."
But he argues the campaign should be about issues more important to North Carolinians.
An opinion poll for The Charlotte Observer, conducted from June 6 to June 11, right after Gantt won the Democratic nomination in a primary runoff, showed Gantt with the support of 44 percent, Helms with 40 percent and 16 percent undecided.
It showed Helms backed by 50 percent of the whites, as against 35 percent for Gantt.
But many pre-election surveys in other states have found whites reluctant to tell an unknown interviewer they intended to vote against a black.
The Observer telephone survey of 452 registered voters had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.
The newspaper noted a poll in June 1984 showed Hunt with a 5 percentage point lead over Helms.
There is an uneasy quiet in North Carolina as Democrats wait for Helms' next move.
Some reporters here have written that the three-term incumbent seems to be keeping an unusually low profile in the state.
Gantt seemed almost serene in his Charlotte headquarters, decorated with upbeat slogans like, "Don't say can't, say Gantt."
by CNB