Sunny Sam

In Senate circles, he is outside the innermost. He has never authored any major legislation. He heads no committees.

He often speaks on the Senate floor--but he has never come close to making that dramatic sort of oration that changes the course of legislative history. In his home state, he has little political power. Yet of all the 35 Senators running for election this year, North Carolina Democrat Samuel James Ervin Jr., 65, has less to worry about than anyone. Last week he won his party's nomination unopposed. And in North Carolina--where there is a substantive Republican vote--the G.O.P. can only offer token opposition against Ervin in November.

The secret of Ervin's success is one of the sunniest dispositions in U.S. politics.

When he bobs his greying head and puckers his face into a smile, even his opponents have to grin back. He is easily the Senate's most amusing raconteur since Alben Barkley, whether he is quoting from the Bible, from Omar Khayyam, or Old Uncle Ephraim back in North Carolina's hill country.

Uncle Eph. On Capitol Hill, it is considered sophisticated to stay silent on the floor but to be influential behind the scenes. Ervin is not tremendously influential behind the scenes-- and he is certainly not silent on the floor. But he has a way of relaxing Senate tensions when he speaks. He was still a freshman member of the Senate when, in 1954, the bitter Senate debate over the censure of Republican Joe McCarthy came up. At one point, when Senators seemed about to come to blows, Ervin arose. He told a typical tale about Uncle Ephraim. The poor old fellow had been tortured for years by arthritis. He was bent double as he sat in church one Sunday. The mountain preacher asked various members of the congregation what the Lord had done for them. All replied, in self-satisfying detail. Then the preacher pointed to Uncle Eph and demanded an answer. Croaked Uncle Eph: "Brother, he has mighty nigh ruint me." Concluded Senator Ervin: "That is about what Senator McCarthy has done to the Senate." Ervin made his point, even while lightening the Senate atmosphere. He did it again during a 1956 hearing of the Senate's airpower subcommittee, when Washington's Democratic Senator "Scoop" Jackson and then Defense Secretary Charles Wilson got into a name-calling argument. Ervin busted in: "I've always been able to sympathize with what Jonah is reputed to have said after the whale threw him off on dry land after three days: 'If you'd kept your mouth shut, this thing wouldn't have happened.' " Ervin's comment may have been irrelevant to the issue--but both Jackson and Wilson calmed down.

Sam's Lawyer. It is almost ironical that Ervin's reputation as a humorist has obscured his standing as one of Capitol Hill's most learned students of the U.S.

Constitution, a document he considers to be "the finest thing to come out of the mind of man." He has four rooms full of books about the Constitution in his home office back in Morganton, N.C. Before going to the Senate, he served as a superior court judge and as an associate justice on the state Supreme Court. The late House Speaker Sam Rayburn referred to Ervin as "my lawyer," consulted him on the constitutionality of pending legislation.

On the Senate floor, Ervin always stands with the South's segregationist bloc --and he is among the most skilled at arguing in constitutional terms, as opposed to racial epithets. This saddens some of his friends. Says one North Carolina associate: "I love Sam, but sometimes I just want to shake him." But then, everyone loves Sam. And New York's Republican Senator Jack Javits summed up that sentiment in the midst of a recent civil rights debate. Said Javits, when needled by Ervin: "The reason it's so hard to argue with opponents like him is that they're such charming people."

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