Articulate and personable, Gantt long ago demonstrated his crossover appeal. In 1983 he won the first of two terms as mayor of Charlotte, then three-quarters white, with 52 percent of the vote. But he will have a harder time making inroads among the “Jessecrats”–rural, white conservatives who register Democratic and vote Republican in national contests. Both Gantt and Helms recognize that such voters will be key to the outcome next November. “Basically, where we shake out is that Helms has 40 percent of the vote, and whoever the Democrat is, he’s got 40 percent,” says Carter Wrenn, executive director of the National Congressional Club, Helms’s PAC. “That 20 percent in the middle has got to be the deciding swing.”
Last week Gantt campaigned in the heart of Helms country, the 14 counties east of Interstate 95 dominated by Jessecrats. A master of hot-button politics, Helms has won three elections by fomenting concern about so-called values issues: pornography, communism, school prayer. At a campaign stop at the Front Porch Restaurant in Elizabethtown, Gantt appealed to the gathered townsfolk on breadand-butter issues closer to home. “We need to send somebody to Washington who will pay attention to the problems that exist for people in rural areas, and the small farmers,” said Gantt. Over the years, architect Gantt developed strong ties to North Carolina’s business community. But he remains strongly pro-choice and anti-death penalty. Such convictions helped cement his base in the black community.
To his peril, Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young ignored his black supporters. In his bid to become Georgia’s first black governor, the former congressman and U.N. ambassador finished a distant second in last week’s Democratic primary. Young will still face Lt. Gov. Zell Miller in a runoff, but his strategy of veering right on social issues seems to have backfired. Says Gantt, of his own unabashed liberalism, “You can’t waffle. You have to say clearly what you want and stick with it.”
Good ole boys: Although Helms sometimes refers to Gantt as “what’s his name,” he cannot afford to dismiss him. The incumbent will almost certainly try to keep the agenda emotional. Some observers believe that he will make race an issue. The opening salvo may have been fired last week by Helms’s special assistant–James Meredith, who became the first black at the University of Mississippi one year before Gantt integrated Clemson. Meredith issued a news release saying that many members of the NAACP–which at its annual convention this month accused prosecutors of harassing black officials-are involved in “criminal or immoral activities” and the “drug culture.” “You can’t say it was planned, but you can’t say it wasn’t part of the campaign strategy,” says University of North Carolina political scientist Thad Beyle. “One of the things Helms always does is send a signal to the boys at the gas pumps, the good ole boys.”
Gantt, too, is taking nothing for granted; in 1984, despite polls showing a strong lead, former two-term governor Jim Hunt lost to Helms. Gantt is at a sharp financial disadvantage against the king of direct-mail fund raising. But as he likes to tell campaign crowds, he has conquered adversity before. “We never felt disadvantaged, even though we were segregated citizens living [a] kind of second-class existence,” says Gantt, who spent his first five years in public housing. Making it to the Capitol would be a personal triumph–and something more: only three blacks have served in the Senate, only one of them since Reconstruction.
