No Blurred Edges; No Crowded Middle

Votes for Jesse Helms in 1984 and 1990

Abstract

[First Paragraph]  In 1984, North Carolina politics took center stage in one of the "meanest, ugliest, and most divisive" U.S. Senate campaigns ever run (Southern Exposure, 1985). In 1990, the attention of the national and international media was once again drawn to North Carolina and a highly emotional, antagonistic, but none-the-less classic, contest of political opposites. In the race for the U.S. Senate, Harvey Gantt, a black, self-styled and unabashedly liberal, former mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina's largest city, was pitted against Jesse Helms, an incumbent, three-term senator who has been touted as the champion of conservative causes in the U. S. Even more than in 1984, the candidates in the 1990 election offered images and positions which were clearly opposite and away from the proverbial political middle; there were no blurred edges in this election. There could hardly have been a clearer choice.