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While it once seemed that Helms would be a strange, one-term evanescence, he began to attract a following. He was never sniping away just for the citizens of Raleigh and Asheville and Monroe. By his extreme doggedness on one issue or another—busing, feminism, gold, guns, always abortion—he won the esteem of single-minded sects all over the U.S. Says one first-term Senator who understands the effectiveness of that strategy: "Every person in the Senate knows Jesse could unloose that barrage of letters. It makes them think twice."
Only when it comes to tobacco has Helms behaved with ordinary congressional pragmatism. The several federal tobacco programs amount to one of the most thoroughgoing intrusions of Government into the agricultural marketplace. Helms, the ferocious free-marketeer, nonetheless strives to perpetuate it. But even in serving that home-state interest (North Carolina produces 40% of the U.S. crop), he has not been altogether successful. As the new chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Helms insisted on a farm bill that would cut food stamps drastically. But his fellow Republicans on the panel, who knew the reductions would draw fierce Senate opposition to Helms' entire bill, dumped it and wrote their own—which Helms then voted against. If pending legislation succeeds in crimping tobacco programs, Helms' clumsiness could become a liability in his 1984 re-election campaign.
Not that he isn't loyal to the tobacco cause. Helms smokes (but does not always inhale) an occasional Lucky Strike. When others light up in his presence, he says, " 'Predate it." Indeed, Helms' single flamboyance is a maniacal Southern courtesy: he grabs every serving spoon, offers to carry every bag and sheaf in sight and opens every door. In fact, he does not just open a door; he sweeps his beneficiary through with a bow and a flourish.
Whatever it is, Helms would rather do it himself. He fries his own breakfasts (eggs, bacon and biscuits), types his own letters in a spare—truly spare—basement room in Raleigh, and refuses to be chauffeured. He drives his own anonymous 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, in which he listens exclusively to what he agrees is "Muzak music."
At home his record collection runs to albums of Guy Lombardo, John Wayne, Amos 'n 'Andy, as well as Strauss waltzes, movie sound tracks and martial anthologies. The Raleigh house is compact, and hugged by camellia bushes and Chinese holly. In the vestibule hangs a Helms coat of arms with a Latin motto, Cassis tutissima virtus, that Jesse and Dot have never bothered to translate. (It means "Virtue is the safest armor" and contains a Latin pun: cassis also means "helm.") There are not many books. Helms wants to take up reading mysteries—Dot tells him that intellectuals peruse them to relax —but for now a Churchill biography lies on a coffee table. There are autographed portraits: President Reagan, Spiro Agnew, J. Edgar Hoover. Helms has collected dozens of figurines of elephants, but not as a hobby; most were foisted on him by friends. He has no hobbies. When he is in Raleigh, Helms never misses Pou Bailey's every-other-Thursday-night poker fest, a 35-year-old ritual. Steaks or jambalaya are served, the joshing among old friends is ceaseless, and wagers seldom