Congress’ Mailbag : Constituents Put In Their 22 Worth

Sen. Alan Cranston received 100,000 cards and letters on Robert H. Bork’s controversial Supreme Court nomination. His fellow Californian, Sen. Pete Wilson, received 60,000. Howell T. Heflin, a Senate Judiciary Committee member from the much smaller state of Alabama, got more than 50,000.

As striking as the paper onslaught was, even more remarkable was its impact on the senators’ votes: virtually nil.

“The main thing he looked at was the nominee himself and what he had said and what he had written,” Heflin aide Jerry Ray said of the senator, one of the last committee members to decide against Bork. “What everybody else said was secondary.”

The Bork battle illustrated a contemporary Washington paradox: The rising tide of congressional mail is least likely to affect how legislators vote on precisely those high-profile issues that spark the most letters.

Personal Letter

With some notable exceptions, one thoughtful personal letter on a little-noticed issue has more chance of influencing a lawmaker than a flood of correspondence on a raging national controversy. This is especially so if the deluge is part of a special-interest group’s campaign.

“On a big issue, the mail is not going to make a lot of difference,” said Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles). “I’m not going to change my opinion just because I get a lot of mail.”

Nevertheless, senators and representatives--acutely aware that individual letter writers are also voters--strive to stay on top of their avalanche of correspondence.

The mail tells them what’s on many voters’ minds, including which issues have piqued public interest. It also lets them score points by being responsive, either by helping constituents cut through bureaucratic red tape or simply by sending an answer. Congressional staffs spend 50% to 60% of their time opening, reading, tallying and responding to the mail.

About-Face on Issue

And, occasionally, an individual letter or a mass-produced deluge of thousands of pieces of mail will prompt a lawmaker--or the entire Congress--to do an about-face on an issue.

Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento) said that a single poignant letter from a 13-year-old constituent persuaded him to reverse his position and oppose mandatory draft registration in 1979.

A barrage of individual letters in 1985 led to the modification of a tax bill adopted the previous year that required those who deduct automobile costs as a business expense to maintain more current and detailed records.

“The IRS rule on auto logs stirred up a storm,” recalled Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. “We got a lot of thoughtful mail on this issue that helped convince us to order a different policy.”

In the last decade the amount of mail pouring into the House of Representatives has jumped 277%, from 47.7 million pieces in 1977 to an eye-glazing 180 million in 1986, the last year for which figures are available. In the Senate it has gone from 32.5 million to an estimated 51 million for last year.

The fastest growing segment is from campaigns organized by special-interest lobbying groups. Contributing to the flood has been President Reagan’s televised appeals to voters, particularly during his first term. Another factor is the higher profile of House members--spurred, in part, by a 340% increase in their own mailings to constituents in the last decade, say members and congressional observers.

At any given time, various groups are orchestrating campaigns to send computer-printed postcards, telegrams and letters to Congress. During one week late last year, they included those supporting and opposing aid to Nicaragua’s Contras, favoring limits on immigration and a balanced budget amendment and resisting an increase in the cigarette tax and reduction in Social Security and Medicare benefits.

No recent issue triggered more mail to the Senate than Bork’s nomination. The usual count of 900,000 pieces a week soared to 2.6 million during the Judiciary Committee hearings last fall. The Senate mail room hired 13 temporary employees and required its staff of 61 to work seven days a week logging and sorting the sea of paper, Senate Postmaster Jay Woodall said.

Much of the Bork correspondence was the “generated” mail whose value is usually discounted by members of Congress. It arrives on pre-printed letters or postcards churned out by computers and mailed to homes or distributed at meetings for individuals to sign and mail on to Washington. At least half of all incoming congressional mail falls into that category.

Little Influence

“I don’t think generated mail has much influence,” said Ray, Heflin’s press secretary. “It’s mostly indicative of the organizational skills of the parties, pro and con, or the amount of money they’re willing to spend.”

“You resent it to a certain extent,” Beilenson said. “You get it all over the place from everybody, or so it seems.”

Such mail, however, is painstakingly tallied, and lawmakers periodically review the count. But legislators generally view this mail “as a pressure tactic rather than a means for constituents to communicate welcome or useful information about their views, concerns and attitudes,” said former Idaho Rep. Orval Hansen, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on congressional mail and is president of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

Some legislators doubt that many of the signers are committed to the cause or are registered to vote.

“Most of the time they don’t have any idea what they signed,” Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale) said. “They go to meetings, and people ask them to sign these cards.”

Wilson’s office once responded to someone who had sent a card supporting protection for the domestic shoe industry. The correspondent wrote: “Senator, I’m only 12 years old so I don’t get to think about foreign policy issues.”

Computer-generated letters don’t just reveal a lower level of commitment than personal letters. They also have to compete with other sources of information about the opinions of constituents. Among them are sophisticated polls, constituent questionnaires, the news media and old-fashioned conversation among lawmakers, political insiders and ordinary folks at home.

“When you get a lot of generated mail and you go back home and people don’t talk about that issue, you know something’s up,” Matsui said. “That happens a lot.”

Strong Feelings

“Even if you wanted to try to vote on what you felt was the popular consensus on an issue, you would not find that by looking at the mail,” said Roy Greenaway, Cranston’s administrative assistant. “Mail is the expression of people who feel strongly on one side or the other of an issue.”

Even some of the special-interest organizations that ask members to write to Congress have rejected the computer-generated mail approach.

“Generally we urge people to write individual personal letters instead of pre-printed postcards or form letters because manufactured mail is heavily discounted in most congressional offices,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. “One handwritten, one-paragraph letter may carry the weight of 10 form letters.”

Nevertheless, intense constituent reaction can occasionally play a role more subtle than swaying a lawmaker’s vote.

Some members of the Iran-Contra committees looked to their mail and phone calls from constituents for guidance on how to conduct themselves during the nationally televised hearings after Lt. Col. Oliver L. North’s testimony triggered unexpected sympathy for him, aides to several committee members said.

Many offices maintained a daily count of constituent reaction rather than the usual weekly tally. The congressional committees themselves counted calls twice daily.

“There was definitely a look toward the mail to see how to respond after North,” said press aide Ray, whose boss, Heflin, also was a member of the Senate Iran-Contra committee.

Yet the Iran-Contra hearing as well as the Bork debate pointed up two other reasons that high-volume mail tends to have little clout on high-stakes issues: It often arrives after a member of Congress has taken a position and it sometimes originates outside the area the lawmaker represents.

Out-of-State

Heflin received more mail on Bork from California than from his home state of Alabama, Ray said. Other Judiciary Committee members received large quantities of out-of-state mail as well.

Even a politically skittish lawmaker can rest easy ignoring letters from voters who have no power to turn him out of office, although there are exceptions. Legislators often pay attention to mail from outside their districts if they have national reputations on specific issues, or head legislative policy committees, or aspire to higher office.

Despite its shortcomings as a barometer of public opinion, the mail is closely monitored by an army of congressional aides, many of whom do nothing but read, log and respond to letters.

Mail can alert lawmakers to pay attention to an issue. It played this role for Cranston by reflecting growing concern over transportation congestion in his home state.

Aides say that mail hostile to a lawmaker’s position can also make him or her think twice, even if it doesn’t swing a vote.

“You may vote the same way, but there’s more angst involved,” a Senate staff member said. “It makes you pay more attention to the consequences of your vote.”

And occasionally these “22-cent lobbyists” can claim victory. Some mass-mail campaigns clearly have worked.

The pro-gun lobby provides an example cited by Hansen in his study of congressional mail.

The well-organized, well-endowed National Rifle Assn. targets specific members of Congress based on membership on particular committees or how susceptible to influence they seem to be. It then urges NRA members to write to those lawmakers--in their own words--when an issue of interest to gun owners is pending. The NRA informs its members of lawmakers’ votes and provides endorsements and campaign contributions at election time.

A spectacular example of a successful mail campaign was engineered by the banking industry in 1983. Congress was besieged by an estimated 22 million cards and letters opposing a previously enacted 10% withholding tax on dividend and interest income. Banks protested the measure and distributed post cards addressed to lawmakers to depositors with monthly statements and at branch offices.

Heflin, who supported the banks from the beginning, still received a staggering 72,000 pieces of mail opposing the withholding tax, Ray said. “There was no one sending us mail on the other side.”

Although critics charged that the banks had distorted the issue by portraying a bid to ensure legal compliance as a new tax, the campaign was effective. Against the wishes of Reagan and Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, both houses repealed the law before it took effect.

Over a Million

During the early years of his presidency, Reagan went on TV and, in a single appearance, generated more than a million cards and letters supporting his tax and and budget cuts, House Postmaster Robert V. Rota said.

By the same token, Rota largely attributes a 25% drop in 1986 House mail and a continued decline in 1987 to Reagan’s declining popularity, saying: “He’s not generating the mail.”

When lawmakers are asked to cite mail that has influenced their decisions, they tend to recall individual letters that brought new information to their attention or conveyed compelling personal experiences. Ray calls these “letters from the heart.”

Most legislators see a sampling of these individually written letters after their mail has been screened by staff members.

Hansen said that a Pennsylvania congressman supported the B-1 bomber until he received a “well-thought-out letter from someone who seemed to really understand the issue” opposing the weapon. This led to an exchange that culminated in the lawmaker, who did not want to be identified, changing his position.

Beilenson said that a letter from a service station worker this year informed him that government employees with taxpayer-funded credit cards were filling up at higher priced, full-service pumps. The congressman is investigating whether this practice can be readily prohibited.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) said that his mail alerted him to the need to resolve a gray area in the immigration reform bill. Entertainment talent and employment agencies were uncertain whether they were responsible for verifying that an alien had proper credentials. Berman said that at his request the Immigration and Naturalization Service clarified the issue, stating that a studio or television network that hires a worker is responsible rather than the agencies.

Whatever its impact, congressional mail can also elicit a smile.

Rep. Morris K. Udall (D-Ariz.) quotes this letter in a recently published book: “Of all the rats and snakes elected . . . you rank head and shoulders beneath the lowest.”

Beilenson received a request from a young man earlier this year for his autographed picture “in case you become famous one day.”