07/13/08 “Sen. Weicker, when you're in Havana, would you mind picking up a box of Cuban cigars for me?”

Two Senators With Very Different Views

The Day

Lowell P. Weicker was just two years into his Senate career when the liberal Connecticut Republican ran into Sen. Jesse Helms, the arch-conservative North Carolinian.

Thud!

Weicker, the free-swinging liberal blueblood from Greenwich whose passion for the Constitution had been stirred at Yale and in the University of Virginia School of Law, took on any cause that jarred him; Helms, the country politician educated at Wake Forest, played on the fault line of racism and never apologized for his extremist views on AIDS, prayer in schools and other issues. The two were destined to clash.

Helms, who died a week ago....

....”The important thing is, I managed to beat him on almost every amendment he proposed to alter the Constitution,” Weicker said. “More often than not, I had Barry Goldwater (the conservative Arizona senator and presidential candidate) as my ally. Whether it was prayer in the schools, or court stripping or not allowing the Supreme Court to use busing as a remedy in the desegregation case. Goldwater didn't go for that stuff.”

Weicker's wife Claudia recalled an uncomfortable moment with Helms. Weicker and Helms had been beating on one another in debates in the Senate just before the Senate hosted a dinner for President Ronald Reagan on Capitol Hill several weeks before Christmas.

Sen. and Mrs. Weicker came out of a driving rain and into the building to encounter Sen. Jesse Helms and his wife Dot just inside the door. The scene was awkward. No one spoke at first. Then Helms said to Weicker:

”My wife says that you have a very nice wife.”

”Well, Claudia says the same thing about your wife,” Weicker replied. The group laughed and the ice was broken.

One of Weicker's stirring battles with Helms concerned efforts to develop the drug AZT which, combined with other drugs, could help AIDS victims. A surly Helms opposed helping AIDS victims, saying “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy ...

...When Helms' protests failed and Weicker's trip was imminent, Helms walked up to the towering Weicker in the Senate cloakroom and said, “Sen. Weicker, when you're in Havana, would you mind picking up a box of Cuban cigars for me?”...

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