Furgurson, Ernest B. Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms. New York: W.W. Norton, 1986. 302 pages.

Ernest Furgurson, chief of the Baltimore Sun's bureau in Washington, and formerly in Moscow and Saigon, has also written a biography of William Westmoreland. This unauthorized biography of Jesse Helms follows him from boyhood and through his early career as a television commentator speaking out against the "Communist infiltration of the civil rights movement."

In 1972 Jesse Helms won his Senate seat with money from conservative financiers. He and his old friend Thomas F. Ellis put together a national political money machine, one of the most effective ever seen on the Right. Called the Congressional Club, it funded candidates and solicited support on favorite issues through direct-mail campaigns. Some of its affiliates included Jefferson Marketing and Hardison Corporation (for-profit companies to handle logistics), and non-profit institutes such as the Coalition for Freedom, the Institute of American Relations and its Foreign Affairs Council, the American Family Institute, the Center for a Free Society, and the Institute on Money and Inflation. Helms came into his own during the Reagan years, when ideological conservatism enjoyed a resurgence at the same time that many fundamentalist Christians with homespun values felt under siege. In the Senate, Helms is mainly a maverick "spoiler," who uses his seniority to gum up the works in one area until he gets what he wants in another.
ISBN 0-393-02325-7

Extract the names from this source

Back to search page