Helms Leading Gantt in Close N. Carolina Vote

Democrat Harvey Gantt, the former mayor of Charlotte, and GOP incumbent Sen. Jesse Helms were locked in a furious struggle Tuesday night, but early returns showed Helms leading amid a flurry of last-minute controversy.

With 31% of the vote counted--about 506,000 ballots--Helms was leading 55% to 45%.

The contest ended on a fractious note, as a massive failure of voting machines caused a judge to order polls in Durham County to remain open 2 1/2 hours beyond the scheduled 7:30 p.m. closing time. Officials also ordered crowded polls in Guilford County opened an hour longer. Both are urban areas believed to be Gantt strongholds.

While Gantt rushed out to make extraordinary Election Night campaign appeals in Durham County, Helms campaign officials tried to get the order reversed and threatened to formally protest the election.

The late maneuvering, including charges of voting irregularities, seemed a fitting climax in a race in which Gantt, trying to become the nation’s only black senator, was up against the controversial white incumbent who, during his 18 years in the Senate, has symbolized far-right conservatism.

Both candidates watched the election returns here Tuesday night, after Helms voted here and Gantt cast his ballot in Charlotte. After voting, Helms stayed home, but Gantt stumped for votes throughout the day.

Helms, contentious to the end, told reporters after voting that he had just a few words for Gantt: “Tell the truth, for once.”

After casting his ballot, Gantt said, “We always thought we were going to win.”

The two men fought a bitter, bruising battle that, in the end, centered on race and became a metaphor for the nation’s emotional confrontation with the issues of race and racism. More than any other political campaign this year, the face-off between Gantt and Helms came to represent a struggle between the Old South and the New.

Gantt, in speeches and advertisements, portrayed Helms as ineffective in the Senate on a range of issues, including education, the environment and health care. He supported women’s right to choose abortion and criticized Helms for opposing abortion rights. “It’s time for a change,” he said repeatedly.

Helms counted on North Carolinians to be content with the status quo, believing that he could win with an appeal based more on what he disliked than what he liked. Thus, in his campaign speeches, remarks on the Senate floor, interviews and ads, he castigated homosexuals, liberals, some artists and women’s rights activists.

To the end, Helms refused to acknowledge that his campaign centered on the old issue of race, insisting that the Senate race simply pitted a conservative against a liberal, good against evil.

North Carolina was ripe for this confrontation of contrasts. A state of contradictions, it is known nationally for its Research Triangle, an area that hums with new technology and new residents who migrated to the state. But it is also a state which ranks 49th on Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, one that routinely suffers racial clashes and hate-group activity.

“North Carolina, without question, has these two sides,” said Nancy Neale, who directs the undergraduate social work program at Appalachian State University and is president of the state chapter of the National Assn. of Social Workers. “The mean side divides people up, setting off their worst fears. That’s what we had in this race.”

The combatants were well-matched archetypes--the white symbol of power against the black symbol of hope for power.

Gantt, a 47-year-old architect, was born in Charleston, S.C., one of five siblings whose father was a Naval shipyard worker. From an impoverished beginning, Gantt rose to mark several firsts, including becoming, in 1963, the first black student at Clemson University. He earned a master’s degree in city planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in 1983 was elected Charlotte’s first black mayor. He was reelected two years later but lost a third attempt in 1987.

During his Senate campaign, Gantt often cited Charlotte, where 75% of voters were white, to remind doubters that he had a history of attracting white voters and defeating white candidates.

None, however, had ever been as willing as Helms to use race in a campaign.

The 69-year-old senator, a native of Monroe, N.C., son of the local police chief, attended Wake Forest College but never graduated. Among his several media jobs was a 12-year run as an editorialist at a television station here, a position that made him famous as a hardball conservative.

Helms parlayed his notoriety as television commentator into his first successful Senate race in 1972, winning reelection in 1978 and 1984.

Previously, however, his opponents had been white. The 1990 contest, with Gantt the first black Democratic nominee, left analysts guessing when Helms would make the contest a racial one.

Helms gambled on making the racial gambit late in the race. Up until October, he spent little time in the state, working instead on Senate business in Washington, running advertisements and using fund-raising letters to take swipes at “the special interests--the ACLU, the homosexual crowd, the Hollywood fat cats, People for the American Way, the so-called National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood and the union bosses.”

Then, with Election Day about two weeks off, and opinion polls showing that Gantt was leading, Helms turned up the heat on race, in speeches as well as in advertisements.

“That was a wake-up call,” said Thad Beyle, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina. “That was to tell voters that ‘this is an important race. Come on out.’ That resonates with some people.”

In fact, the electorate was energized on both sides. Officials Tuesday reported heavy turnouts throughout the state, predicting a record for a non-presidential election year.

After they voted, many people across the state expressed hope that the state would heal after the long, contentious campaign and the unprecedented publicity that was focused on it.

In Winston-Salem, Gail Withers, a business owner who is black, voted for Gantt and was still angry about a television ad that Helms ran. It shows white hands crumpling a rejection letter as a voice-over says: “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. It is that really fair?”

One result of the campaign, said Withers, is to “remind us that racists are still out there trying to set us back.”

“One of the frustrations is having the state stereotyped by people who don’t know the South very well,” said Neale.

She, like many North Carolinians, complained that the racial tone of the campaign prevented discussion of the state’s pressing needs.

Neale called the campaign a symbol of a “discouraging time across the country--group against group. With all the serious problems we face, such as infant mortality, teen pregnancies, drugs, we hope that, now, we can see some interest in them.”