10 pm, ... Finkelstein (my volunteer analyst who called the final results within one-tenth of one percent based on a Sunday-night telephone survey) assured me that I had won." Finkelstein encapsulated Buckley's message in the catchphrase, "Isn't it about time we had a Senator?" Finkelstein's work in New York led to his serving in 1971-72 as one of several pollsters for President Richard M. Nixon's re-election campaign developing sophisticated demographic analysis. The 1972 election also saw the first of his three victorious campaigns to elect Jesse Helms as U.S. senator from North Carolina. After the election, Finkelstein worked with Helms political aides Tom Ellis and Carter Wrenn to establish a permanent conservative organization, the National Congressional Club, which lasted until 1995. Finkelstein and White went their separate ways in the mid-1970s, and he founded his own firm, Arthur J. Finkelstein & Associates (often later shortened to AJF & Associates). In the 1976 presidential primaries, White supported Gerald Ford, while Finkelstein worked for Ronald Reagan's insurgent campaign. He helped Helms's Congressional Club turn around the faltering Reagan effort with a victory in the April North Carolina primary. His work continued in the subsequent Texas primary. "Finkelstein had been a key figure in 1976, when he helped orchestrate Reagan's campaign-saving comeback in North Carolina" which was crucial in Reagan's further political advancement. At Finkelstein's urging, Reagan made a major issue of the impending Panama Canal Treaties, which Gerald Ford was negotiating and which infuriated conservative voters. (This proved to be Reagan's signature issue throughout the late 1970s.) As Jules Witcover later reported, "Tens of thousands of Wallace voters were gradually cut adrift during his slide [in the primaries] ... and Reagan media man Arthur Finkelstein recruited a Wallaceite from Fort Worth to radio and television spots for Reagan ... It was dynamite." The Associated Press's Mike Robinson wrote Finkelstein was "viewed by many as instrumental in Gov. Reagan's 1976 primary successes in North Carolina and Texas." 1975–80: NCPAC, Senate, and Reagan Passage of the post-Watergate Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) amendments, and the subsequent 1976 Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo, drastically altered the rules by which Presidential and Congressional contests were waged. Finkelstein was among the first to sense an opportunity, and pioneered the concept and execution of independent expenditure campaigns, which would operate as a third force in an election beyond the control of candidate or party officials. Beginning