THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 19, 1995 TAG: 9510190007
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
Sen. Jesse Helms is a pioneer in modern campaign-finance techniques, especially the art of raising money through the use of alarmist direct-mail appeals. But his 1996 re-election campaign will be conducted without the aid of the Congressional Club campaign apparatus he helped create.
Using methods familiar from the world of televangelism, Helms and the Congressional Club mailed millions of letters to the easily frightened explaining that dire things would occur if money wasn't sent immediately. Helms raised millions for his own campaigns and other conservative candidates and the technique has been widely emulated. Oliver North is among the latest scare-tactic candidates to prosper from alarmist direct-mail appeals.
Often Helms' letters were thinly veiled appeals to paranoia and bigotry. Helms was pictured as the last bastion against communists in the streets, homosexuals in the schools, blacks in the workplace and Ted Kennedy in Congress. Critics often denounced Helms as shameless, but they seemingly were wrong.
``I just got to the point where I was embarrassed to be in front of my friends,'' Helms said in announcing he would no longer use the services of the Congressional Club in 1996.
Of course, there may be less to Helms' reformation than meets the eye. He quotes a woman who's on his mailing list. ``I used to get about two letters a week from you asking for money for some crisis. Now I get a letter every couple of months.''
That doesn't sound as if Helms has gone cold turkey exactly. In fact, Helms no longer has to resort to strident and hysterical direct mail. In the past, he portrayed himself as an embattled outsider, a lone voice of conservatism facing overwhelming forces of liberalism. Now Helms is a senior member of the congressional majority, head of the Senate foreign-relations committee, the embodiment of the establishment.
That helps explain why the old finger-in-the-dike, sky-is-falling, apocalyptic style was becoming embarrassing. If the country is still going down the road to perdition, it's the Republican majority that's now doing the steering.
Furthermore, as a powerful member of the majority, Helms is more than ever in a position to tap into the big money of special-interest PACs and no longer has to rely heavily on the nickel-and-dime contributions of the disaffected. For the first half of 1995, Helms raised $914,000 largely from PACs. For the corresponding period in the past election cycle, he raised a comparable $1.06 million largely from small direct-mail donors.
And direct mail is expensive. After expenses, candidates keep only a fraction of the dollars. PAC money is pure gravy. So maybe Helms has reformed because his new-found power translates into a new way to raise millions. Wherever Helms gets his campaign funds, the same warning applies. When considering a man whose career has been based on appeals to prejudice, obstruction rather than constructive action and on serving special interests, let the voter beware. by CNB