DAVENPORT, Iowa -- Jesse Helms left the U.S. Senate more than a year ago, but his name hasn't been retired on the campaign trail.

In addresses to crowds in Iowa, Sen. John Edwards has drawn some of his heartiest applause lately when talking about his former Tar Heel colleague -- a long-time target of liberals during his three decades in Washington.

Edwards has been invoking Helms' name during a section of his stump speech in which he details ways people have underestimated him during his life.

In 1998, Edwards told an audience in Davenport on Sunday, he ran for the Senate against an "incumbent Republican senator, handpicked by Jesse Helms."

Edwards' opponent was former Sen. Lauch Faircloth, though Edwards didn't mention him by name.

As the election approached, Edwards told the crowd, "everybody said, 'That young fellow thinks he's going to take on the Helms political machine in North Carolina? Who does he think he is?"

"Well, I took on the Helms political machine," Edwards said. "I beat that incumbent Republican senator, and now I'm the senior senator from North Carolina, not Jesse Helms."

Edwards became the state's senior senator upon Helms' retirement and the election of Elizabeth Dole to replace him.

Sticklers could take issue with another of Edwards' claims.

Faircloth was, in fact, encouraged to run in 1992 by Helms' top advisers. But Helms' political machine, the Congressional Club, disbanded in the mid-1990s, before Faircloth's 1998 re-election bid. Faircloth did count several former Helms associates among his advisers, however.