Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr. (October 18, 1921–July 4, 2008) was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001. Helms was a leader of the modern conservative movement, and he helped start the conservative resurgence, rescuing Ronald Reagan's political career before his presidency, but was known for confronting anyone that strayed from his own conservative convictions.

A journalist by trade, Helms was the longest-serving popularly-elected Senator in North Carolina history and was widely credited with shifting the one-party state dominated by the Democrats into a competitive two-party state. The Helms-controlled National Congressional Club's state-of-the-art direct mail operation raised millions for Helms and other conservative candidates allowing Helms to outspend his opponents in most of his campaigns. He was praised for his ability to connect complicated ideas on a level that spoke to ordinary people.

He was perhaps the last unreconstructed Southern conservative that started his political career in the Democratic Party when that party symbolized racial segregation and transitioned in the early 1970s to being a Republican. Helms was an outspoken conservative who opposed many progressive policies regarding race such as school integration, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Helms also reminded voters that he tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.