Still at the Helm

Raleigh, N.C.

JESSE HELMS doesn't miss Washington. After 30 years in the Senate, he retired in 2002. "I was just so glad to get home," he says. Helms and his wife Dot live in the brick house that used to belong to her father. It's minutes from the state capitol and close to his small office. It's been their Raleigh home for more than a half-century. Their daughter Jane and her family live next door. Helms drops by his office most days, watches C-SPAN occasionally, but keeps his political activity to a minimum. Looking back at his years in Washington, he says: "I hope I haven't made too many people mad."

He made many people mad. His dogged and unflinching devotion to conservatism infuriated liberal Democrats and a good many Republicans. Now he's the one who gets upset. Helms is disappointed that so few senators have rushed to defend the sanctity of traditional marriage. He hates the excessive spending passed by Congress. Having made the eradication of communism in Latin America one of his chief causes as a senator, Helms is troubled by the resurgence of the Marxist threat and America's soft response to it. "We'll never be free of our responsibility" there, he told me. Helms believes the best thing that could happen in the region is for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to die. "I wish I didn't think that," he says. "But I'm convinced of it."

Helms, 83, and forced by a nerve disorder to use a walker, has commenced a final fling as a public figure. His memoir, Here's Where I Stand, was published by Random House in August. He's not going on a book tour, nor is he doing radio interviews. Helms taped a single TV interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. And he's granted a few interviews with print journalists he knew in Washington. All this will culminate with a banquet honoring Helms in Washington on September 20.