THE MONEY GAME

Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2006 | 7:20 a.m.

WASHINGTON - This is the part of Congress you never see - your elected officials alone in a tiny, drab office with nothing but a desk, a phone and one thing on their minds: money.

Nevada's elected officials spend a good chunk of their workweeks outside of their offices. Sometimes they are at their party's headquarters, sometimes they are using cell phones on street corners outside the Capitol. But always, they are dialing for dollars - an activity in which ethics rules prohibit them from engaging at their congressional offices.

It's the same for representatives of virtually every state. Instead of working in their congressional offices, they go in search of money while their staffs work on drafting legislation, helping constituents and cajoling the bureaucracy.

The reason is the escalating cost of campaigns. Members need money to win re-election every two years, and their political parties pressure them to raise money for other candidates, said Meredith McGehee, policy director at Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan organization that advocates campaign finance reform.

The Federal Election Commission said congressional candidates raised $1.2 billion in 2003-04, and are on track to raise more this two-year cycle. For a typical $1 million House race, a member would need to raise more than $1,000 a day.

That requires far more time than ever before as campaigns increasingly are fought out in expensive television advertisements and party leadership pressures its members of Congress to help the overall cause.

Today fundraising is as much a part of serving in Congress as voting on the House floor, McGehee said. She estimates that members spend up to 10 hours a week on the phones, leaving voters to lower their expectations about the level of service they get in Washington.

"They spend so much time and energy focused on how to get the money, they don't have as much mental time or energy to spend on the public policy questions," McGehee said. "That's a dangerous development for democracy."

Campaign finance reformers have pushed for years to eliminate private money from the system and turn the country toward publicly funded local campaigns, as is done in seven states .

This year Democratic senators put forward a plan that some reformers hope will get traction in Congress. But as the post-Labor Day election season kicks into high gear, the pressure is on to spend every free moment "making calls."

"It's show time," said Ed Patru, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "If they're not out meeting voters, working the district, they're generally raising resources."

Monday afternoons is when Republican Rep. Jon Porter can usually be found making calls.

His House office is in prime position, just across the street from his party's headquarters. In the building is a bank of rooms often packed with lawmakers asking for money by phone.

Some of Porter's calls are arranged ahead of time by his campaign staff. Some are cold calls to Political Action Committees or donors in Nevada.

In past years, the two-term congressman has tried to cram his calls into the campaign months. But this year, his staff has tried to spread the workload across most of the year, which means Porter has to do it just a couple of hours a day for a couple of days each week.

"We just plod along and spread it out," chief of staff Michael Hesse said.

Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley is at a competitive disadvantage. She has to make a seven-minute walk to get to a cubicle at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Sometimes, that's too much hassle, so she opts for cell phone calls from the streets.

"It just happens to be the reality of politics in the 21st century," Berkley said Monday. "We are simultaneously serving while we're running for re-election. You don't have much downtime. I wish it were different."

Porter faces a challenge Nov. 7 from Democrat Tessa Hafen in a district evenly divided between voters of each party. That explains, in part, why he has raised $2.3 million this two-year cycle.

Berkley's largely Democratic district is considered safe, but still, she has raised $1.5 million this election cycle. Having that much money on hand helps scare away would-be challengers.

Departing Rep. Jim Gibbons never devoted as much time to fundraising as he does now that he's the Republican candidate for governor.

In his suit jacket pocket, he keeps a list of the names he is scheduled to call that week. He can spend up to five hours a week making calls, depending on how busy his work is in the House. Every week back in Nevada, his staff gives him a new list.

Gibbons' campaign manager Robert Uithoven, his former chief of staff in Washington, said the congressman's office has tried arranging calls ahead of time only to have to cancel when House votes or other business prevails. "A lot of it's playing phone tag," he said.

It's not much different in the Senate. Despite lawmakers' insistence that fundraising doesn't eat into the time they have for official business, Nick Nyhart, executive director of Public Campaign, a nonprofit organization working for campaign finance reform, said there is only so much time in the day to do both.

Raising $1 million one phone call at a time takes a lot of time when the maximum an individual donor can give to a House candidate is $2,100 - or $5,000 from a PAC.

Nyhart's organization said polls show that more than 70 percent of Americans support substantial campaign finance reforms, including the kind of private financing of federal elections his group supports. He expects it would cost $6 to $8 per taxpayer - about $1.8 billion - to fund races for Congress.

"People really want to change the political system," Nyhart said. "They really don't feel like their elected officials listen to them and pay attention to the way they want the government to function."