Good help isn't hard to find.

• Author: Greve, Frank
• Position: When Congress members use public employees for their personal campaigns

You don't have taxpayer-subsidized workers to helps you keep your job. So why should your congressman?

When Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was indicted last month for using state employees to make campaign fund-raising calls and using a state computer to keep track of contributions, there had to be a few quickened pulses on Capitol Hill. After all, Washington incumbents are accustomed to using their offices for partisan work.

Consider:

* Two weeks before last fall's election, retiring Rep. Glenn Anderson dispatched five congressional aides to California where they campaigned for Anderson's chosen successor, Evan Braude, his stepson, at taxpayers' expense.

* Rep. Les AuCoin, running hard for Oregon's Senate seat, flew eight Hill aides out last fall for a total of 189 days. Taxpayers paid their salaries and airfares because they frequently worked days in AuCoin's district office, says former aide Bob Crane. Nights, weekends, vacations, and comp time they spent campaigning for AuCoin.

* Rep. John Conyers, chairman of the House Government Operations Committee that investigates federal waste, out-did them both, enlisting 14 members of his staff in one way or another in his Detroit reelection campaign. Among the aides' taxpayer-paid "official representational duties" was handing out thousands of Conyers' press releases at shopping centers and churches shortly before election day.

Overall, at least 70 incumbents summoned two or more federally-paid Washington aides to their districts late in their campaigns, House expense records indicate. Typically, lawmakers claimed, "official business" required their aides' presence. Just as typically, that business ended on election day. Aides who are skilled political fighters and whose futures are riding on their bosses' reelection are one big reason that incumbents won 93 percent of the races they entered last fall, down just slightly from their 95 percent rate in the eighties. "They're part of the permanent campaign, right along with franking. It's a terrible, terrible abuse," says Sara Fritz, a Los Angeles Times political finance analyst and co-author of The Handbook of Campaign Spending.

Most folks don't get publicly-funded assistants to help them keep their jobs, and it's unclear why congressmen should be an exception. But pending campaign reforms do not address campaigning by aides or a second widespread abuse among incumbents seeking reelection: the use of franked mail as a campaign tool. Fund...