This comment is from a district staffer for a member of Congress who told me that a strong constituency service operation was the key to her legislator getting reelected. I asked her for some examples of constituency service that she, the staff, or the representative she worked for might engage in, and she detailed the “usual suspects”: helping someone track down an errant social security check, assisting a constituent in procuring veteran's benefits, and the like. She also regaled me with some of the more exotic assistance her office has engaged in on behalf of the legislator's constituents over the years: hiring a private investigator to locate a constituent's stolen Boston Terrier; sending in a Medivac helicopter to a sick constituent honeymooning in Bermuda; and intervening on behalf of an eighteen-year-old constituent who got into some legal trouble in Jamaica. All in a day's work for a staffer who works hard answering all kinds of requests from constituents.

Later revealed in my conversation with her was that most of these stories she told of constituency service that went above and beyond the call of duty were for white constituents. The legislator she worked for was interested in assisting all constituents, regardless of race, in any way possible. However, the white constituents tended to contact the legislator as he was also white, whereas many black constituents contacted a nearby black member of Congress for assistance.