Patricia Luker of Royal Oak, Mich., was so mad that Abraham's office did not respond to repeated requests for help with her health maintenance organization that she appeared in a campaign ad targeting him in last year's election. She said her family's HMO refused to pay for surgery for a rare metabolic disorder for her daughter, who died last year. If I were from a big company that could make a large donation, they probably would have returned my call. Abraham disputed Luker's claims that his office didn't return her calls, but his spokesman acknowledged the ad probably played a role in the senator's narrow loss to Democrat Debbie Stabenow. Abraham is now President Bush's energy secretary.
Lawmakers generally do their best to see that every constituent query gets a reply.
Scott Schloegel, chief of staff for Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said last year staffers answered 25,585 letters to the Washington office alone. Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., personally signs every response letter to constituents and includes a handwritten note at the end if he recognizes the name. He'll stay late at night after the legislative day has ended or take them home to Michigan and sign them as he's riding around to meetings and events. He figures he's signed more than 300,000 letters during his 10 years in office. So he often conducts them himself.