"Jesse was an inspiration," says Trent Lott, the impressively high-haired Republican Senate leader. "When I was still in the House as a junior officer, I watched him from afar."

Lott is leaving the Senate floor as he says this, having just kicked off the marathon of Helms encomiums. His voice catches. "Sorry," he says. "I'm a little teary. This is very nostalgic. A lot of the fights Jesse fought in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, we won. He pulled us all this way."

Unlike the front offices of most senators, Jesse Helms's reception room in 413 Dirksen is not a garish shrine of self-congratulation or a shadowbox of state-related kitsch. The only interesting celebrity photo on the wall is from an admirer of a certain age: HOW CAN YOU LEAVE US TO THESE LIBERALS? WELL BLESSINGS ANYWAY!!! JANE RUSSELL.

In North Carolina, the constituent service provided by the Helms operation is legendary. It is run with seamless efficiency by bob-cut blondes and Brooks Brothers men whose smiling, lacquered professionalism makes New Yorkers acutely aware of their unruliness -- we're all loud voices and dark clothes. Helms's aides respond quickly to letters, take handwritten messages (the senator refuses to install voice mail), and, most inconveniently, barricade their boss against journalists; it's something they've learned from years of unbecoming press.

But as Helms's days in the Senate dwindle to double digits, a more expansive mood seems to have filled the room. After a few minutes, his chief of staff appears, and he guides me to an antechamber outside the senator's private office. Helms is busy receiving an award from the North Carolina Farm Bureau. When that's over, he beckons us inside, offers me a seat, and quickly establishes that he is not exactly a stranger to New York. He and his wife came to New York on their honeymoon.

"This was World War II," he says, in his lilting, trademark slur. (When he speaks, he shpeaks, as if he had a wad of tobacco in his mouth.) "And I was a serviceman, see. They wouldn't let me pay for my meals or anything else. Dot and I went to see the kids kick up their heels at -- what's that place called?"

Radio City?

"Yes! And . . . and, um, then, Frank Sinatra, when he was juuuuust comin' along. I forgot who he was singing with. A Roxy gal." He sighs. "We saw so many things. But New York ain't that way anymore. I like the old New York better."

Helms began his political career in 1951, working as chief of staff for Willis Smith, a North Carolina Democrat who got elected on a baldly segregationist platform. (A typical campaign ad: WHITE PEOPLE, WAKE UP BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.) After a brief stint in Washington, he returned to North Carolina, worked his way up the ladder of the state banker's association, and eventually wrote a column for its in-house newsletter. His piquant commentary landed him a job as a conservative on-air editorialist for WRAL in Raleigh, and that, in turn, transformed him into a local celebrity, positioning him well for his Senate bid in 1972. When he won, Helms discovered that most of his fellow southern senators were still Democrats. "The Republicans in those days, they were nice gentleman," he says, "but they were sort of, sort of . . . stodgy. I mean, we were coming along. We were trying to spread our wings and learn how to fly!"

In those days, the Republicans also considered themselves a hopeless, permanent minority. In order to get legislation through, they had to master the arcane rules of the Senate, and Helms took on this formidable task with gusto. It drove his opponents, and even his allies, nuts.

He forced votes on bills that members didn't want to weigh in on, and stood in the way of bills they did. He put secret holds on ambassadorial nominations, amended other people's amendments, filibustered with abandon. In December 1982, when every member of the Senate had a ticket in his pocket to fly home for Christmas, Helms kept the Senate in session for an extra week because he opposed Reagan's nickel-per-gallon gas tax. (Simpson later declared he'd "seldom seen a more obdurate and obnoxious performance.")

Perhaps because he blocked as many bills as he authored, Helms refuses today to say what legislation he's most proud of, though he certainly has a few plump contributions to choose from -- including the Helms-Burton law, which penalizes foreign companies that do business with Cuba, and his forced reorganization of the U.N., which many Republicans say vastly increased their respect for the institution. "But I'm not a boastful man," he says. "And a lot of battles, I've lost."

Then he looks me right in the eye. "I shall go to my grave a strong pro-lifer. I'm married to one of the finest ladies I ever knew, and we have two daughters and all that, but when it comes to the taking of the life of a child, I don't think anybody has that right."

Regardless of where one stands in the cultural wars, though, Helms didn't win them. I point out that Roe v. Wade has withstood major challenges in the past 30 years, the National Endowment for the Arts perseveres, Will & Grace is in its fifth season . . .

"Well, I never view it as a win-lose proposition," he says. "I never consider that I lost a battle if I did the best I could."

And that's just it: Helms's objective was seldom to win; it was to force the Senate to go on record on polarizing, hot-button issues he'd shrewdly isolated as important to his conservative base -- like banning government funding of pedophilic art, for example. (Sure, it's unconstitutional, but who wants to vote in favor of such a thing?) As a former media man, he understood that controversy was the surest way to stimulate the interest of the press, and as a southern traditionalist, he knew that the best way to excite his supporters was to exploit the giant backlash generated by the sexual revolution, affirmative action, and gay rights.