Lawmakers on Voters’ Mailing Lists : Constituents’ Concerns Range From Surfboards to Taxes

WASHINGTON —  An Ohio man once wrote California Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) for information that he figured any Southern California congressman would have readily at hand: what to look for in buying a surfboard.

A writer trying to prove the advantages of a meatless diet asked the aid of the oldest congressman--Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.)--in locating a 100-year-old vegetarian.

And Democratic Rep. Michael D. Barnes, whose Maryland district is only a few miles from his Capitol Hill office, routinely receives requests to remove raccoons that have wandered into his constituents’ garages.

Ever since the First Congress convened in 1789, Americans looking for help have turned to their elected representatives in Washington. Last year alone, about 271 million pieces of mail arrived at the Capitol--quadruple the volume 15 years ago--and countless thousands of phone calls whizzed through congressional switchboards.

The daily flow of mail provides Congress with an excellent barometer of what is uppermost in the voters’ minds.

Slick Lobbying Groups

Most of it in recent years has been standard fare generated by the letter-writing machines of slick lobbying groups--letters that are usually answered in kind by a congressman’s own letter-writing machine. But the letters and calls can also provide a sometimes-humorous, sometimes-poignant window on the lives of ordinary people.

A frustrated 79-year-old woman, for instance, wrote Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) to complain that she could not find the flat-soled shoes she needed to maneuver her walker. “My, are you lucky you are a man,” she wrote. “Your clothes are cheaper, your shoes are comfortable and we women have to put up with anything.”

Some Capitol Hill offices consign offbeat letters to what they call their STUN file--”nuts” spelled backward.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) relies on a time-honored comeback to insulting or irritating letters: “I thought you should know that somebody has been sending ridiculous letters to me, and using your name.”

Today’s Congress has no monopoly on off-the-wall correspondence. Mrs. John A. Logan, writing in 1901 of her three decades as a congressional wife, said that constituents a century ago saw it as “their blessed privilege to write to (lawmakers) upon every subject and to ask them for anything they happen to wish.”

‘Send Some Carp’

She recalled one letter imploring: “Will carp eat goldfish? If so, send me some carp.” And another, from a man seeking to adopt a child, insisted: “We want you to pick us out a baby, my wife wants a girl but I want a boy but never mind.” Mrs. Logan said the letters were duly forwarded to the Fish Commission and the Foundling’s Institute.

Now, said Senate historian Richard A. Baker, sophisticated techniques of communication make congressmen “a lot more visible to their constituents than they were 20 or 30 years ago.” And so it appears that voters are even more likely to unload their problems and grievances on Capitol Hill.

The volume of strange requests can exasperate the congressional staff aides, such as the one who recently read a letter from a constituent angry upon not receiving his TV Guide. “Isn’t that crazy?” the staffer said. “And we have to spend time responding.”

Indeed, staff aides are keenly aware that the writers of offbeat letters are voters too, and they try to set some time aside to reply to as much out-of-the-ordinary correspondence as they can.

“No matter how crazy, you treat it as if their concern is real,” said an aide to California Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento). “What might be funny to someone reading it from the outside is not funny to the person who wrote it. They expect a response and they deserve a response.”

Bureaucratic Maze

Congressmen have one particular advantage--they can cut through the bureaucratic maze that so often frustrates ordinary citizens in search of governmental action.

Two years ago, for example, the infant son of an illegal alien in Oklahoma was suffering from a life-threatening immune deficiency, and the only suitable bone-marrow donors appeared to be a brother and sister still in Mexico. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service frowned on letting the illegal alien make a round trip to his native land to retrieve the relatives. So hospital officials appealed to Rep. Glenn English (D-Okla.), and English prevailed on the INS to let the brother and sister into the country.

More often, the problems that arrive on Congress’ doorstep are less critical--merely vexing troubles that require more flexibility than can be expected of government computers. Rep. Harris W. Fawell (R-Ill.), for example, was called upon to untangle the tax and Social Security records of two people who not only had the same name but had been issued the same Social Security number.

Mail is certain to come in waves whenever a congressman is involved in a particularly important or controversial issue. Thus it was not surprising that the televised plea last year of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) to “write Rosty” in support of tax-overhaul legislation drew an outpouring of more than 70,000 letters.

Such floods cannot always be predicted. Members of the House and Senate appropriations committees were somewhat nonplussed last year when they received stacks of mail from self-proclaimed witches and warlocks objecting to a proposal that would have denied tax-exempt status to churches practicing satanism. The idea, which had been added by the Senate to an appropriations bill, was quietly dropped in a House-Senate conference on the bill.

Bricks, Car Keys

Cards and letters are not all that travel through the mail. House Deputy Postmaster C. Elmo Boydston said that Capitol post offices also have had to handle bricks, car keys, 2-by-4s and cola bottles mailed in by groups angry over one congressional issue or another. He recalled, for example, that an avalanche of paper plates with pictures of food pasted to them hit congressional mail rooms when Congress considered reducing school lunch subsidies several years ago.

Children routinely write congressmen asking for help with their homework and congressional staffs try to oblige. But aides to Wilson had to admit that they were stumped when a young constituent in Stockton asked for all the information they could provide on her speech topic--”unicorns and homosexuality.”

A thoughtful fourth-grader from San Mateo, figuring that “Senetor” Wilson could use a break from the Washington grind of embassy parties and White House receptions, extended the senator a handwritten invitation to “come over to my address and we can talk over orange juice. It will be fun.”

Some congressmen have special interests or unusual backgrounds that have attracted a sort of unofficial constituency far outside the boundaries of their districts. California Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose) receives special requests from other Asian-Americans throughout the country, while the 85-year-old Pepper is showered with cards and handmade presents from elderly people who see him as their champion in Congress.

And when it comes to expecting special treatment from lawmakers, no one is more demanding than their fellow congressmen. Barnes said that the 130 members of Congress who live in his Maryland district come to him when they want traffic lights installed near their homes or when they object to a school being closed. Some have even asked him for help with escaping traffic fines, although Barnes said firmly: “I don’t fix tickets.”