didates have stayed out of jail, our littienold state ought to be the focus of rightnmuch national attention. That’s notnsurprising: from a major metro point ofnview our election is great melodrama, asngood as anything professional wrestlingnhas to offer:nIn this corner, the defendingnchampion, the Darth Vader ofnAmerican politics, friend ofnThird World dictators, homophobicnfoe of artistic freedom,nSenator No himself: Jesse Helmsnof Monroe, North Carolina.nHis challenger, fromnCharlotte, North Carolina,nrepresenting the New Southnand the forces of light: the firstnblack student at ClemsonnUniversity, the first black mayornof Chariotte, now possibly thenfirst—nWell, who knows? The political handicappersnaround here don’t give Ganttnmuch chance, and neither do I, fornreasons I’ll get to. But it’s eady yet, andnCantt has already confounded thenoddsmakers by handily defeating hisnopponent in the Democratic primarynrunoff, a race that was supposed to benmuch closer. (Remember when DavidnDinkins and Doug Wilder did less wellnthan the polls had predicted and wenheard all sorts of unflattering speculationnabout why white people who saynthey’ll vote for a black man, don’t?nWell, apparently lots of people who saidnthey wouldn’t vote for Gantt, did. Explainnthat, Daniel Schorr.)nGantt “has done a great deal, probablynmore than he himself realizes, tonestablish respectful communicationnacross sensitive barriers in human relations.”nHe “has demonstrated that henknows a thing or two about humannnature, and, more important to ournway of thinking, that he is sincere.”nThose observations were offered by —nwell, by Jesse Helms, commenting forna Raleigh television station in 1963 onnMr. Gantt’s application to ClemsonnUniversity. Helms was comparingnGantt favorably to James Meredith,ncalling the two men “a study in contrasts.”n(I guess you could say they stillnare: Meredith works for Helms now.)nThe relentlessly Democratic RaleighnNews and Observer turned up thatnmorsel, probably intending to embarrassnHelms by quoHng him as havingn50/CHRONICLESnsaid good things about his opponent.nThe quotations, however, could as easilynsuggest that Jesse Helms has nevernbeen as simple or predictable as hisnimage in some circles suggests.nAnyway, the young Clemson architecturenstudent has grown up to be ancandidate much in the mold of ‘Virginia’snDouglas Wilder — that is, beforenWilder won and his social lifenpicked up. Like candidate Wilder, describednby one observer as “the leastnthreatening black man since the MillsnBrothers,” Gantt is personable andnarticulate. Like Wilder — and unlike,noh, say Jesse Jackson — Gantt has heldnpublic office, elected mayor of NorthnCarolina’s largest city by a biracialncoalition, (He was defeated for reelectionnwhen the fickle electorate voted innCharlotte’s first female mayor.)nGantt also resembles Wilder in thatnhe has kept his distance from thenRainbow Coalition. He said once thatn”We don’t need Jesse Jackson’s help,”nby which he probably didn’t meann”We need Jesse Jackson’s help like ancase of ringworm,” but that’s truenenough. When Jackson’s old buddynLouis Farrakhan came to Chadotte tonpreach whatever the Islamic equivalentnof a revival is, he invited Mr. Gantt tonattend, but the candidate arranged tonbe out of town. He had to be innCalifornia for a meeting of the NationalnOrganization for Women, which isnprobably a slight improvement, electorallynspeaking.nThe conventional wisdom has it thatna Democrat can win statewide innNorth Carolina these days only if hengets 40 percent of the white vote. TerrynSanford got 46 percent, and he sits innthe Senate now. Jim Hunt got 38npercent, and he now sits in Raleigh,nallegedly practicing law. If Gantt turnsnout large numbers of blacks who don’tnordinarily vote, all bets are off, butnotherwise I think Gantt is a nonstarter.nNot because of his race, though.nSure, NPR will find some white votersnto say that they won’t vote for Ganttnbecause he’s black. But it’s a mistake tonassume that these folks would vote forna white Democrat with Gantt’s convictionsnand credentials. Just as any Democratncan count on better than 90npercent of the black vote right now,nany Democrat with Gantt’s baggage —nleave his race aside — is going to havenproblems with a great many whitennnvoters.nThere is, to start with, what a Raleighnreporter once called “the Mecklenbergnthing.” Mecklenberg Countyn(that is, Charlotte) simply isn’t verynpopular with folks in the rest of thenstate, largely because Chadotteans donlittle to disguise their conviction thatnthe rest of us are a bunch of yokels.nRunning for statewide office fromnCharlotte is like being from Atlantanand running in Georgia — no, worse:nAtlanta has a lot more voters thannChadotte. Having been mayor of thenplace may hurt Gantt at least as muchnas it helps him.nGantt is also going to have troublendisguising the fact that he is whatnpasses around here for a liberal. So farnhe hasn’t even tried. The other day, fornexample, he volunteered that he’snagainst capital punishment — therebyndisagreeing with a solid majority of thenvoters, black and white. Republicannand Democrat. When even DiannenFeinstein has adopted the basketballnwisdom that execution is the key tonwinning, it isn’t clear why HarveynGantt felt obliged to have any positionnon that issue. After all, he won’t benable to pardon anybody.nGantt has assembled a campaignnstaff with impressive credentials. Hisnpollsters, for example, used to work fornPat Caddell. He has hired a fundraisernand field organizer who used to worknfor John Glenn, and who has served asn”Director of Women for the State ofnOhio” (whatever that is). His pressnsecretary is a woman who most recentlyndid the same job for Willie Brown,nspeaker of the California State Assembly.nAnd his “media consultants” arenthe New York City firm that worked fornJim Hunt when he lost the Big One tonHelms in 1984; one of the two “accountnexecutives” (that’s what they callnthem) handling Gantt is Mandy Grunwald,nthe daughter of Time magazine’snHarry Grunwald.nNow maybe you’re thinking thatnsounds like a slick, professional operation;nobviously someone in Charlottenthinks so. But it’s more likely that younsee the problem, which is that this is ancarpetbag enterprise. It probably won’tnwork — not because Tar Heels dislikenoutsiders, but because New York accountnexecutives usually don’t knowndiddly-squat about the South. Worse,nthey don’t know that they don’t know.n