COLUMN ONE : Crime Hits Hard on Capitol Hill : One senator’s wife fled a gunman. Other lawmakers have been mugged, stalked or robbed. For many in Congress, violence has struck close to home, steeling resolve to pass tough laws.

“A fellow with a .45 automatic put a gun to my wife’s head and said, ‘We’re leaving in your car,’ ” recalled Kent Conrad, relating a horrifying episode that unfolded two years ago in front of his home a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

Conrad rushed out of the house, but the assailant, a convicted rapist serving the end of his term in a halfway house, waved him back inside with his gun. Then the gunman dragged Lucy Conrad two blocks before she managed to escape, bruised and shaken.

The Conrads are more than just another statistic in the rising spiral of urban violence. Kent Conrad is a Democratic senator from North Dakota, and that puts him in a position to do more than just complain that crime is mounting uncontrollably.

“I am ready to do something very serious about crime,” Conrad told the Senate recently. “We have to get tough. People who commit violence need to be put away and need to be separated from the rest of us.”

Conrad is one of a growing number of lawmakers whose personal experiences are a major force in forging a more hard-line stance on crime in both the Senate and the House. With dozens of legislators, their families and aides sharing the experiences of victims across the country, Congress seems likely to pass the most comprehensive crime bill in history by the end of the year.

When the Senate debated such legislation in November, members made clear that their determination to do something about violent criminals extended beyond the strong public call for action and intense media attention that the issue had attracted. They also spoke solemnly about family members or close friends who had been victims of crime.

“The number of members (of Congress) and staff people who have been mugged has created a sense of urgency in dealing with crime,” said Rep. Chet Atkins (D-Mass.), who was robbed at gunpoint in 1988 in front of the Supreme Court.

What emerged from the Senate was the most sweeping and costly crime-fighting bill in history. The measure, adopted by a 95-4 vote, would set aside $22.3 billion to put 100,000 more police officers on the street, build more prisons and stiffen sentences for using a gun in a crime. The House will take up the Senate-passed bill shortly.

Voters are demanding action. In a just-completed Los Angeles Times Poll, 90% of respondents said that crime was a “very serious” problem for the nation. And a recent poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News found that 76% of those surveyed favored mandatory life sentences for repeat violent offenders.

As if they needed any more reminders, the personal experiences of lawmakers brought that message home in a compelling way.

Capitol Hill, the neighborhood of stately turn-of-the-century townhouses where many legislators live, is close to some of Washington’s poorest and most violent areas. It’s a combination that makes this neighborhood a hotbed of crime that draws national media attention.

In one particularly bloody episode only blocks from the Capitol, then-Rep. Bob Traxler (D-Mich.) was clubbed unconscious and robbed of $8 in the spring of 1992 as he was walking to his car. Like other violent crimes involving members of Congress or their aides, Traxler’s mugging received far more attention than any of the two dozen robberies that occur on an average day in Washington.

The 1992 slaying of Tom Barnes, an assistant to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (D-Ala.), also drew national attention. Barnes’ murder--he was shot while walking to a convenience store near his Capitol Hill home--sparked a movement to authorize a death penalty in Washington. Voters rejected the proposal in a referendum.

The murder of another congressional aide, Abbey McCloskey, in the same neighborhood that year also drew demands for additional anti-crime legislation. Her killer was the first person sentenced in the District of Columbia to life in prison without parole.

So common has street crime become here that Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Santa Barbara) did not bother to tell police after he was robbed on a northwest Washington street last May. Huffington disclosed the episode eight months after it occurred, brushing it aside as insignificant.

“In the grand scheme of things, this didn’t seem that important,” Huffington said. “I mean, there’s rape, there’s murder . . . there’s a lot worse things out there.”

Important or not, Huffington said, the episode had a searing impact on his own way of looking at crime. “Every time I read a newspaper about another crime, it just makes me madder,” he told States News Service.

Lawmakers have special protection from the Capitol Police force, whose 1,200 officers keep close watch on their homes. Nonetheless, many acknowledged that a growing fear of becoming a crime victim has caused them to change their lives.

“We now do not go to the automatic teller after dark,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), a main author of the Senate-passed crime bill. “My wife tells me we are not going to do the shopping on Friday nights anymore. . . . It is unsafe for my mom (in Delaware) to walk out into the parking lot of the shopping center in my middle-class neighborhood, and I have to do something that changes that.”

Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) has been a hawk on the crime issue since his son, Gray, and his daughter, Elizabeth, witnessed the murder of a 16-year-old girl during a $20 robbery at a bank teller machine near Vanderbilt University in Nashville last year.

“They were the first on the scene to give her aid and comfort,” Sasser said. “They came home and told their mother and myself the story, and I think every parent would know the fear and anger that I felt at that moment.

“We have to bring this nightmare to an end. We need a blueprint to put more police on the streets, to take back our neighborhoods from the hoodlums, from the thugs, from the murderers, to put the violent among us behind bars and to try to deter our young people from taking the first wrong step to a life of crime.”

“I do not think there is anybody here who is soft on crime,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), noting that FBI statistics indicate 83% of Americans can expect to be a crime victim. Kerry, a former prosecutor, has suffered three car thefts and a break-in at his Washington home.

But his most vivid memory is of the night recently when he was walking along the street a block and a half from the White House. A car screeched past him and someone inside threw a beer bottle that broke at his feet.

“I yelled at them, then realized I made a mistake,” Kerry said. “They drove around the corner, stopped and started backing up. I walked into a restaurant. . . . The car drove up and I saw them glaring at me. I am confident if I stayed out on the street, I might be a statistic today.”

A similar experience was recounted by Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), who said that he and his son, Christopher, were menaced on a Washington street by young men in a car with darkened windows.

“The car made a quick U-turn and started coming over to our side of the road,” Cohen said. “They were about to pile out and attack the two of us. The only thing that stopped them from doing so is that we happened to be walking by a building with a security guard standing outside who was armed. Once they spotted the security guard, they got back into the car and took off.”

Crimes against members of Congress are not new. In 1978, two men beat and robbed Rep. Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), who was then the House minority whip, behind his home on Capitol Hill. Michel, who fought back, suffered cuts on his head and face, requiring seven stitches on his tongue, and a fractured rib.

Less than two weeks earlier, then-Sen. Robert Morgan (D-N.C.) was robbed of $300 by three teen-agers while window shopping in downtown Washington.

But the frequency of these Capitol crimes has increased along with the explosion of violence in schools and drive-by shootings that have sent the Washington homicide rate soaring to record rates in recent years. Crime and violence grew so bad last year that Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly asked President Clinton for permission to use the National Guard to help the police control the streets of the District of Columbia. Clinton refused the request.

Few lawmakers have been closer to violent crime than freshman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who became mayor of San Francisco after the assassination of her predecessor.

During the Senate debate on crime legislation, she told how she learned to use a gun after terrorists tried to bomb her San Francisco home and shot out her windows.

More recently, a man accused of stalking Feinstein while she was mayor was convicted in September of violating a court order to stay at least 150 yards away from her, her staff, her home and her office. Michael Magday had served six years in prison for weapon violations when he was arrested in 1981 outside San Francisco City Hall with a loaded shotgun.

Sometimes an encounter with crime can pay unexpected political dividends. Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.), returning from a morning jog a few years ago, discovered a burglar in his Capitol Hill home. When the culprit leaped from a second-floor window to make his escape, Synar gave chase, climbing fences and running through alleys as he urged his neighbors to call 911. Finally, with the aid of a 17-year-old ally, Synar tackled the burglar and held him until police arrived.

Synar said he asked himself afterward: “What are you doing? Are you crazy? He might have had a weapon.”

His exploit proved beneficial back in Oklahoma, where he had been pictured by critics as soft on crime. Said Synar: “It solved that problem overnight.”