Abstract

Helms's last stand?

Harvey Gantt, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate, showed up at the Whitaker Mill Senior Center in Raleigh, North Carolina and reminded everyone that the next day, July 30, marked the thirty-first anniversary of Medicare. Although his audience was small, Gantt was reaffirming an important theme of his second Senate race. This time around, what matter most is that Republican incumbent Jesse Helms has voted against the interests of his most mainstream constituents: Old folks with big medical bills; parents daunted by the costs of college; workers facing layoffs; consumers who can't afford prescription drugs. On the campaign trail, Gantt has taken up an economic populism that, is still unheard of in the corporate world of North Carolina Democratic politics.