Love or hate, Helms left mark for local residents

By Bernard Baker

Published: July 4, 2008

The life of Jesse Helms had a profound influence on at least four people in the Dan River Region.

Danville native Carter Wrenn was a top Helms lieutenant for at least 20 years. His brother, David, worked in a couple of the senate campaigns and met his future bride when she joined the staff.

Another Danville native, Ernest Furgurson, followed the North Carolina senator on Capitol Hill for the Baltimore Sun. Furgurson wrote an unflattering biography of Helms in 1986.

Lorrie Wrenn, David Wrenn’s wife, worked for Helms in the mid-1970s as the campaign office manager. She said Helms was a man of conviction who stood by his conservative beliefs. He was a joy to be around and she did not see him as a difficult person.

“I enjoyed being with him,” she said.

Lorrie Wrenn spent part of Friday going through Helms memorabilia such as photographs and other materials. Carter Wrenn hired her away from a good-paying job to work in a political campaign.

She was able to travel across North Carolina with Helms during a campaign. She might be at a $5 barbecue dinner in the mountains of Sylva or she could be at the other end of the state in Wilmington to build the grassroots organization.

Furgurson’s book, “Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms,” put the senator in a less flattering light.

“He will be remembered as a throwback, an artifact of things the South has pretty much out-grown,” Furgurson said Friday from his home in Washington, D.C.

Helms was a cynical politician who exploited race and communism, sometimes tying the two together, to build up resentment among white voters to win elections, he said. The race mattered during his senate campaigns, and once listed Jesse Jackson’s name in a fundraising letter 24 times.

Furgurson said Helms supporters can’t ignore more than 2,000 television editorials on WRAL in Raleigh where the race was central to the topic in many of these broadcasts. Unlike Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, Helms won elections by arousing the fears of white voters. He wrote while Helms welcomed “redneck votes,” he didn’t like being around them and supported the interests of big business and tobacco over working people.

Helms was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, defeating Nick Galifianakis, a congressman from Durham. He beat Insurance Commissioner John Ingram six years later by his most comfortable lead during his senate career.

In 1984, Helms and Gov. James Hunt tangled in one of the most expensive senate races of that time. He won against former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990 and 1996.

Furgurson said Helms won because of President Ronald Reagan’s coattails. Supporters like David Wrenn said Hunt was a tough opponent and it was no cakewalk for Helms.

Wrenn added Helms saved Reagan’s 1976 presidential bid by winning the North Carolina Republican primary. Reagan was about to give up until the Congressional Club, the political operations for Helms, went to work.

“Helms and Hunt was one of the tightest races North Carolina has ever seen,” Wrenn said.

“Maybe it was a little Helms coattails that put Reagan on office in 1980.”

Carter Wrenn said Reagan and Helms are responsible for the end of the Cold War. They saw the threat to the U.S. after the loss of the Vietnam War and went to work.

“A lot of people in the country, were looking at the cold war, and thinking we could lose it,” he said.

Helms severed his ties with the Congressional Club because of internal disputes in the mid ’90s. Carter Wrenn could not recall the last time he saw Helms after the parting of ways and described the falling out like a messy divorce.

“I can’t say we kissed and made up, but they moved on. There were no hard feelings,” Wrenn said. Your life moves on and you go in new directions.”

• Contact Bernard Baker at or (434) 791-7986.