Good vs. Evil

RALEIGH, N.C.--Porky, the World's Largest Pig, and Muffin, the World's Smallest Horse, had been drawing huge crowds all day at the annual North Carolina State Fair.

But on a recent Saturday evening, the lines disappeared, the freak-show hosts fell silent, and the roller-coasters seemed almost to stop.

North Carolinians young and old began to focus their attention on radios and portable television sets, and the latest round in a bitter Senate race.

"The Love Boat is ain't," says one elderly farmer, spitting tobacco juice at a nearby fence. "Jim and Jesse's at it again. Hot damn."

Jim and Jesse--better known to outsiders as Republican U.S. Sen. Jesse A. Helms and Democratic Gov. James 8, Hunt, Jr.--were preparing to mix it up on statewide television in the fourth and final debate of their bitter Senate race. And true to the last 18 months of campaigning, both men let it fly.

At stake in this election--the candidates repeat ad nauseum--is the future of North Carolina. Hunt, seen by many as the embodiment of the New South, argues for progress and high technology. Helms, widely considered the standard-bearer of the Old South, wages a moral crusade in defense of traditional American values.

More than that, North Carolina's Senate battle--the most expensive and vituperative in U.S. history--is widely seen as a national race, a referendum on both the Reagan presidency and the New Right.

With polls showing President Reagan far ahead of Walter F. Mondale by almost 2-to-1 margin--25 to 30 percentage points--in North Carolina, Helms has bet the bank, on a strategy of sewing himself on the President's coattails.

On the road and over the airwaves, Helms cozies up to the White House, boasting that "Ronald Reagan is my longtime friend."

That friendship is valuable not only to me; it's valuable to North Carolina," the senator says. In a veritable campaign coup, Helms, in August, persuaded Reagan to tape a 30-second television commercial in which the President solemnly proclaims: "One senator we can always count on to stand up for his beliefs is Jesse Helms. Jesse's courage on the tough issues is an inspiration for all Americans."

"I cherish my friendship with Jesse, and I need his honesty and his outspoken patriotism back in the United States Senate. Next year, more than ever, I'm going to need the advice and the experience of Jesse Helms to keep America moving," the President says.

Hunt is quick to challenge the Helms-Reagan association, pointing out that Helms has often opposed the President on many of the administration's most centrist policies.

"People realize that Sen. Helms is different from President Reagan," Hunt told reporters recently. "People know the difference, and they're just not going to buy that business of him being so close to Reagan ... they're going to distinguish in this race."

Meanwhile, the governor has distanced himself from the national Democratic ticket. Celebrities, not politicians, join him on the trail. Television stars Hal Linden and Bonnie Franklin, singers James Taylor and Peter, Paul and Mary, and hairdresser Vidal Sassoon have appeared on the governor's behalf While both members of the Democratic presidential ticket have flown in for brief rallies and a handful of southern governors have held news conferences boosting Hunt, only Sen. Gary W. Hart (D-Colo) has appeared recently on the governor's behalf.

With the race's national implications in mind, both candidates are trying desperately in these last days of the campaign to break out of a virtual dead heat.

Helms holds a slim lead, due in large part to Reagan's popularity in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans three-to-one. But Hunt is confident that his superior get-out-the-vote organization will make up the difference.

While the campaign has been waged almost exclusively over the television airwaves for the last 18 months, both men have hit the hustings for the home stretch. Helms, a tall and grandfatherly Southern gentleman with a quick temper, tours the state in "Avocado One," a green and white recreational vehicle.

At every stop, the 63-year-old senator kisses babies, while spinning yarns about the "good ol'days" and his "never-ending battle against communism." Hunt, 47, seems limitless in his energy on the trail. From dawn 'til dusk, the gregarious governor works the factory lines and tobacco warehouses, shaking hands, giving speeches, and "listening to people."

Across the state, Helms, the champion of the New Right, blasts at Hunt, calling the two-term governor a "racist," a "felon," and a "consummate liar." Hunt, whose billing as a moderate New South politician gave him an early but fleeting lead, fires back, attacking Helms as the "High Priest" of a nationwide "network of right-wing extremists."

For the Tar Heel voter, there is no escaping the invective.

Sunday football, for example, takes a back seat to the commercials shown between posessions. Local radio stations, when not airing campaign ads, spin Helms-Hunt musical parodies. Ray Parker Jr.'s hit "Ghostbusters" has been dismembered so that the chorus repeatedly chimes "Who ya gonna call? Mudslingers! They ain't afraid of no mud. They're just out for some blood."

Only a phone off the hook will keep the Helms and Hunt forces from ringing and encouraging voters to exercise their most sacred rights. And in the mailbox, bills from the electric company barely outnumber "Dear Friend" fund-raising appeals from the candidates.

This ceaseless barrage adds up to a staggering figure: $22.1 million. As of October 17, Helms had raised $13.7 million and Hunt had raised $8.4 million, easily breaking all previous Senate campaign spending records. Cumulatively, they have spent about $7 per registered voter--enough to pay the salaries of all 100 U.S. Senators for nearly three years.

The contributions pour in from all over the nation. Almost two-thirds--64.4 percent--of Helms' major contributions have come from out of state, while Hunt has collected more than one-third --36.9 percent--of his major contributions out of state.

Well over three-quarters of the money ads has gone to campaign advertising. Through August, for instance, the candidates purchased air time for more than 15,000 commercials, roughly 11,000 for Helms and 4,000 for Hunt. Those numbers add up to about five and a half days of non-stop vitriol. Since August, Helms and Hunt have stepped up the onslaught.

Helms, a former newspaper reporter and television broadcaster, justifies his advertising blitzes in repeated diatribes against "ultra liberal news media." In speeches and interviews, he insists that he is forced to spend millions on commercials in order to "correct" the deliberate "lies and distortions" printed in North Carolina's major newspapers.

And Helms' commercials have had their desired effect. The senator has gradually chipped away at Hunt's "moderate" armor, portraying the governor as both a wishy-washy leader and a "closet left-winger." Helms, in speeches and commercials, depicts Hunt as a "Mondale liberal" who frequently associates with blacks, homosexuals, feminists, and atheists.

The message has taken hold and Helms, who began the race, ironically, as the "challenger," has drawn even with Hunt.

In July 1983, Hunt led Helms in statewide public opinion polls by as much as 19 percentage points. Thirteen months later, a September Gallup Poll showed Helms leading Hunt by four points, a 23-point reversal. Today, with less than a week to go before the election, the race is a tossup, with Helms showing a slight, statistically insignificant lead. Even in Wilson, the governor's home county in eastern North Carolina, a local newpaper poll shows Helms leading Hunt, 46 to 42 percent. But the poll's 4.5 percent margin of error makes the race a dead heat.

Hunt's message has changed as frequently as the polls. The governor has hit hard at Helms, assailing the senator for votes against Social Security, Medicare and Veterans benefits. And recently, Hunt has attempted to portray Helms as the "Prince of Darkness"--the leader of a national right-wing cabal intent on re-writing the U.S. Constitution and replacing the Republican Party.

Helms' responses to the attacks are testament to the powers of the incumbency. President Reagan, Vice President George Bush, half-a-dozen Reagan cabinet members and more than 33 U.S. senators have stumped in North Carolina on Helms' behalf. Most recently, in a highly controversial move, 22 U.S. ambassadors endorsed Helms' candidacy.

The state's 3.3 million registered voters must make an important decision this year: it is both a referendum on the Reagan presidency and a choice between, as one observer put it, "the progressivism and pragmatism of a New South" and "the pride and prejudices of the Old South."

But North Carolinians will not be the only ones to feel the effects of this election's outcome. Now, Carolina's Senate race is truly a national Senate race, explains Hodding Carter III, chief correspondent of Public Television's Inside Story, a news-magazine that scrutinizes the media.

"Happily, it's a timeless morality play that you can cast according to your own definition of good and evil," Carter, a former State Department spokesman, says of the race. "But no matter who wins, Lucifer or the Angel, the battle will go on."

With Republican control of the Senate at issue and with Helms playing a key role in the ultra-conservative movement, a Hunt victory could strike a death-blow to the New Right. Thus, the stakes are high and the ultraconservatives have mobilized behind Helms.

For example, The Southern Baptist Advocate, a nationally distributed magazine published in Texas, says in support of Helms: "In North Carolina, it is a clear cut choice between those who stand on one side of moral issues and those who stand on the other."

On the campaign trail, Helms, a devout Southern Baptist, often hints at a divine mandate for his re-election.

In a rally at a recent Moose Lodge meeting in Durham, N.C., Helms recalled how in 1983 he narrowly missed being on Korean Airlines Flight 007. Helms said he chose to attend a Texas fund-raising event thrown by Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry, and therefore cancelled his booking on the jumbo jet that was shot down by the Soviet Union.

"Say it's just an accident," Helms said. "I don't believe it. I believe that fella upstairs has got one more thing he wants me to do."

When asked later if he meant that God has a special interest in his candidacy, Helms answered: "Oh, bull. I'm not going to get into which side God is on."

Hunt, a Presbyterian, is quick to attack Helms for his positions on school prayer and abortion. "I believe in school prayer," the governor says. "But it can't be voluntary if it's authorized by public officials. I don't want Jesse Helms to write a prayer that my kids have to say in schools.

"My opponent and fundamentalists are trying to dictate what the political agenda will be, what the Christian position is," Hunt says, adding that important issues "such as food for the hungry, a superb education for every child and keeping the peace" are thus excluded from the Helms' list of priorities.

North Carolinians are not quite sure what to make of their celebrated Senate race. Public opinion polls show that the number of undecided voters has actually increased in the last few months. Many experts attribute the rise to a growing alienation among the state's voters--disenchantment, they say, with hard-ball, hard-sell tactics the candidates have used in their war over the airwaves.

Dirty politics are by no means new to North Carolina. In 1950, voters were treated to a rough-and-tumble slugfest between Willis Smith and Frank Porter Graham. Smith, the Republican candidate, doctored photographs to show Graham's wife purportedly dancing with a black man. Red-baiting was rampant. And a young man named Jesse Helms, it is alleged, was intimately involved in Smith's negative propoganda campaign.

Little has changed in the last 34 years. The tactics are more subtle, but the underlying issues are still present. Claude A. Allen, a spokesman for the Helms campaign, recently referred to Hunt's gay supporters as "the queers." And Helms's campaign literature is replete with subtle references to black voter registration and the feminist movement, both "the threats" to the white, male-dominated world of North Carolina's past.

When the Senate debate was over at 8 p.m. on Saturday evening. North Carolina's fairgoers returned their energies to cotton candy, corn dogs and ferris wheels.

Perhaps somewhere echoing in the minds of the fairgoers was Governor Hunt's sad comment in the closing moments of the final debate:

"After all you've seen, maybe you wish that you didn't have to vote for either one of us, and you don't have to. But one of us is going to win, and therefore we hope very much that you'll continue to study it, think about it and let's all do our very best."

"...its a timeless morality play that you can cast according to your own definition of good and evil. But no matter who wins, Lucifer or the Angel, the battle will go on." --Hodding Carter