# Congressional Club The **National Congressional Club** — [[Jesse Helms]]'s North Carolina-based political action committee (founded 1973 by Helms and Tom Ellis to retire his campaign debt), which became the **largest PAC in America** by the early 1980s. Its innovation was industrial-scale **direct-mail fundraising** from small-dollar ideological donors, paired with pioneering negative TV advertising (including the machinery behind the 1990 "Hands" ad). The financial engine of Helms's five Senate campaigns and a prototype for the movement-conservative and later MAGA small-donor outrage-fundraising model. ## See Also - [[Jesse Helms]]