Former Republican NC Sen. Jesse Helms dies at 86

"It's just incredible that he would die on July 4th, the same day of the Declaration of Independence and the same day that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died, and he certainly is a patriot in the mold of those great men," said former North Carolina GOP Rep. Bill Cobey.

An iconic figure of the South, remembered by many for his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Helms had faded from public view as his health declined. He died of natural causes early Friday morning at the Raleigh convalescent home where he had lived for the past several years. "He was very comfortable," said former chief of staff Jimmy Broughton.

Funeral services are planned for Tuesday at Helms' longtime church in Raleigh.

The son of a police chief, North Carolina voters first learned of Helms through his newspaper and television commentaries. They were a harbinger of what was to come, as he won election to the Senate in 1972 and rose to become a powerful committee chairman before deciding not to seek a sixth term in 2002.

"Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?" Helms wrote in a 1959 editorial.

Compromise, Helms would not.

His habit of blocking nominations and legislation during his first term led his former employer, The News & Observer of Raleigh, to nickname him "Senator No"--and Helms loved it. He was unafraid of inconveniencing his fellow senators, forcing filibusters before holidays and once objecting to a request by phoning in his dissent from home while watching Senate proceedings on television.

Helms was a polarizing figure, both at home and in Washington. He delighted in forcing roll-call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on federal funding for art he deemed pornographic, school busing, flag-burning and other cultural issues. Among his first forays into politics was working in 1950 to elect segregationist candidate Willis Smith to the Senate, and he later fought against much of the civil rights movement.

In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," he said in a newspaper interview at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."