Helms, Hunt, and Whiteness: the 1984 Senate Campaign in North Carolina
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HELMS, HUNT, AND WHITENESS: THE 1984 SENATE CAMPAIGN IN NORTH CAROLINA A Thesis by JAMES PATRICK KELLAM Submitted to the Graduate School at Appalachian State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2017 Department of History HELMS, HUNT, AND WHITENESS: THE 1984 SENATE CAMPAIGN IN NORTH CAROLINA A Thesis by JAMES PATRICK KELLAM May 2017 APPROVED BY: Karl E. Campbell, Ph.D. Chairperson, Thesis Committee Antonio T. Bly, Ph.D. Member, Thesis Committee James R. Goff, Ph.D. Member, Thesis Committee Chairperson, Department of History Max C. Poole, Ph.D. Dean, Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies Copyright by James Patrick Kellam 2017 All Rights Reserved Abstract HELMS, HUNT, AND WHITENESS: THE 1984 SENATE CAMPAIGN IN NORTH CAROLINA James Patrick Kellam B.A., Appalachian State University M.A., Appalachian State University Chairperson: Dr. Karl E. Campbell In 1984, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, Jim Hunt, challenged Republican Jesse Helms for his seat in the United States Senate, and the contest between the two Tar Heel politicians proved to be the most expensive non-presidential election in American history up to that time. Two decades after the Civil Rights Movement of the mid- twentieth century, race continued to impact the politics of the American South. Helms won with a four percent margin over his Democratic rival by appealing to 63 percent of the vote cast by white Tar Heels, most of whom lived in rural North Carolina and the state’s small towns.1 The post-civil rights, emotionally-charged culture of whiteness in the Tar Heel state—the transcendence of anti-black racial prejudice and other cultural issues favored by white conservatives over class interests—informed the tactics used by the Helms campaign as well the response from Hunt’s campaign. Only by giving equal attention to both campaigns, their strategies, and tactics—particularly within the advertising battle that flooded 1 William A. Link, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 302. iv media outlets in the state for over a year—can the irrational influence of whiteness on North Carolina politics be understood. Moreover, a better grasp of whiteness illuminates not only the effects the culture has on American politics but how race is used by those seeking power within American political culture. v Acknowledgments First, thank you to my thesis director, Dr. Karl E. Campbell, who suggested Jesse Helms as a research topic to a wide-eyed graduate student intent on answering all the questions pertaining to contemporary southern political history. His tutelage and guidance have been invaluable throughout this project. Secondly, the graduate seminars taught by Drs. Antonio T. Bly and James R. Goff helped open my eyes to the complexities of race, southern culture, and the inseparable combination of the two. I am grateful that both agreed to serve on the committee for this thesis. Thank you also to Drs. W. Scott Jessee, Timothy H. Silver, Michael Turner, and Mary Valante for their critiques and criticisms of my writing for the projects undertaken in their various seminars. A word of thanks, as well, to Cathy Dorin- Black, Jennifer Baker, and the staff in the Special Collections at D.H. Hill Library at North Carolina State University, as well as Sarah Carrier of the North Carolina Collection in the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Without their help, I never could have navigated the incredible amount of source material from which this study grew. A special thank you to my parents James and Pam Kellam. They suffered a son whose favorite activity growing up was asking questions, and their interest and love of history fueled mine. Lastly and most importantly, thank you to my wife Amelia who read multiple drafts and suffered through endless late-night discussions on southern politics, race, and culture as I tried to refine my ideas and focus my thoughts on a topic that has proven to be infinitely more complex than I originally thought possible. vi Dedication To my wife and my parents who encouraged me to pursue something I had only talked about for years. Thank you. vii Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................... vi Dedication ............................................................................................................................... vii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... viii Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One ............................................................................................................................ 11 Chapter Two ........................................................................................................................... 45 Chapter Three ......................................................................................................................... 79 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 115 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 124 Vita ........................................................................................................................................ 128 viii Introduction Two Politicians, Two Souths, and One Group of People The political contest between Senator Jesse Helms and Governor Jim Hunt defined the way with which southern politicians approached the political culture of the South in the decades after the Civil Rights era of the mid-twentieth century. Prior to the 1984 Senate campaign, both men achieved success in North Carolina politics. Helms won his Senate seat in 1972 and was re-elected in 1978. The Tar Heel state elected Hunt lieutenant governor in 1972; put him in the governor’s mansion in 1976; and re-elected him governor in 1980. In 1984, Hunt challenged Helms’s Senate seat and lost by four percentage points, 52 to 48. It was the only loss Hunt experienced in his political career and the closest margin of victory in any election in which Helms ran. One Greensboro journalist wrote that the election was not just a contest between two politicians, but a showdown “between the conservative Old South and the progressive forces of the New.”1 Though certainly a contest between the Old and New Souths, the campaign between Helms and Hunt, the two most powerful politicians in North Carolina during the last three decades of the twentieth century, represented something deeper within the South’s politics. The two men pitched an eighteen-month political battle that conveyed two visions of the region. One sought the exclusion of others through the maintenance of the cultural status quo in order to appeal to white Tar Heels. The other attempted to gain the consent of white voters to expand the state’s politics beyond the center of power within the cultural confines of the traditional South through the cautious political inclusion of cultural others. They approached 1 William D. Snider, Helms and Hunt: The North Carolina Senate Race, 1984 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 3. 1 the state’s electorate in different ways with different strategies heavily focused on attracting the votes of Tar Heel whites. Historians, political scientists, journalists, and sociologists have analyzed the 1984 campaign in an effort to explain the forces at work within southern and North Carolina politics. Elements central to the campaign such as southern progressivism versus traditional conservatism, modernization versus traditionalism, and race have been thoroughly studied in an effort to show how and why Helms won the election. One point of broad consensus within the historiography was the influence of President Ronald Reagan’s victorious coattails on Helms’s victory. Another focus within the historiography, though with less consensus, has been Helms’s use of race within the campaign.2 Though the issue of race has been included within the analysis of the election, it has been treated as a peripheral element of the campaign with other factors having greater influence on the Tar Heel state’s electorate. Former editor of the Greensboro News & Record William D. Snider noted the role of race in the campaign, but argued that it was “the 2 For studies on the 1984 campaign see: See William D. Snider, Helms and Hunt: The North Carolina Senate Race, 1984 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Ernest B. Furgurson, Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986) 165-187; Paul Luebke, Tar Heel Politics 2000 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998) 167-179, 184-188; Rob Christensen, The Paradox of North Carolina Politics: The Personalities, Elections, and Events That Shaped Modern North Carolina (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 248-255; William D. Link, Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008), 271-305; Earl Black