The Machine That Jesse Built

By John F. Stacks

Fear and computers help the Congressional Club grow rich

It could be the headquarters of any good ol' Southern politician almost anywhere, any time. The cluttered rooms are on the second floor of a Raleigh office building. The folks in charge are soft-spoken and unassuming, shying away from taking credit for any special genius or any real authority. Yet Jesse Helms' Congressional Club is the very model of modern, high-technology politics, a shrewd mating of computers and direct mail. Helms and his minions have built what amounts to their own nationwide political machine. It has combined newfangled fund raising with old-fashioned mud slinging to become one of the most powerful forces in American politics.

Already this year the Congressional Club has raised almost $3 million; that is more than the Democratic National Committee. Last year the club was the nation's second largest independent political-action committee, raising $7.8 million, behind only the National Conservative Political Action Committee (N.C.P.A.C.), for which Helms also helps raise money. Such resources enabled the club to pump $4.5 million into Ronald Reagan's presidential effort. The club was able as well to send money to 30 conservative candidates for the House and Senate across the nation.

Begun simply as a campaign committee for Helms' first Senate race in 1972, the club went big time when it enlisted right-wing Direct-Mail Maestro Richard Viguerie to pay off the Helms campaign debt. With Viguerie's assistance, the club has built a mailing list of some 300,000 names, all proven givers to reactionary causes. Viguerie, hi fact, still controls two-thirds of the list and receives rental payments from the club every tune those names are used for causes other than Jesse Helms' reelection.

Like other right-wing direct-mail operations, the Helms machine has perfected the techniques of turning fear into funds and piety into profit. Nearly every one of the 10 million to 20 million letters mailed from the club each year warns of the growing dangers of Communism and Government social spending. Cautioned Helms in a letter last summer: "In the face of the growing Soviet war machine, the ultra-liberals have virtually disarmed America."

In a mailing last spring to drum up money and support for Reagan's budget cuts, Helms wrote that "liberal pressure groups are at work, organizing to flood Congress with mail demanding that liberal food stamp and welfare giveaways not be cut. Sadly, this pressure, if not offset, could be successful." The effort to stop the ultraliberals, the mailings usually suggest, arises because "the Lord may very well be giving us one last chance to save America." The letters typically end: "God bless you always. Sincerely, Jesse."

For all their pleas for a return to morality in national life, Congressional Club operatives conduct campaigns that flirt constantly with the unethical practice and the unfair charge. The club and its chairman, Tom Ellis, the Raleigh lawyer who is Helms' most powerful adviser, last year ran their own candidate for Senate in the person of North Carolina's John East, the wheelchair-bound conservative known in Washington as "Helms on wheels." East used club personnel as his campaign staff, club mailing lists for fund raising and Jefferson Marketing Inc., a production company created by the club, to produce his television ads.

The East effort was a successful example of the negative campaign genre. Incumbent Democrat Robert Morgan was portrayed as a man who had "been taken in by the ultra-left-wing McGovern liberals in the U.S. Senate." In fact, Morgan was among the most conservative Democrats in the Senate. East's ads charged that Morgan had voted "to scrap the B-1 bomber." Morgan, in a 39-page postcampaign rebuttal to the East ads, said he had voted twice for the B1, voting against only the last-ditch effort to build five prototypes as a bailout for the manufacturer.

In the last week of the campaign, East's television ads charged Morgan with voting to give 13,000 textile jobs to Communist China, an allegation based on his vote to grant the Chinese most-favored-nation trade status. Morgan says his analysis showed that the vote would actually increase markets for North Carolina goods, but he lacked the funds to counter the assault. "How do you fight this?" Morgan asks. "All you can do is to mitigate the damage until their excesses catch up with them."

The club is careful to protect the Helms base in North Carolina. Using the money raised by appeals to support Reagan's budget, the club spent $200,000 last spring to oppose a gas tax increase sought by Democratic Governor James Hunt, a possible contender for Helms' Senate seat in 1984. The campaign was aimed at Hunt directly, not at the legislature, which had to pass his proposed measure. Club Treasurer Carter Wrenn says the club will also target some North Carolina Democratic Congressmen in next year's elections.

With expensive legal advice from the Washington law firm of Covington and Burling, the club adheres scrupulously to federal campaign-spending laws. But its Jefferson Marketing offshoot is a private, for-profit firm and is thus not required to report how it spends money paid it by the Congressional Club. (A group disbanded last month called the Campaign Committee, which had provided workers for the political campaigns, had similar status.) That makes a detailed examination of the club's activities impossible.

Indeed, the Helms machine's freedom from the constraints of money, state lines and party labels troubles many professional politicians. Insists Tom Ellis: "We are a bridge between conservative Democrats and conservative Republicans. I would like to see a realignment under the Republican banner, but it wouldn't bother me to change the name. In the real world, it may be that all we can do is realign the Republican Party." Helms and his money club have already done that in North Carolina. --By John F. Stacks

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