Rep. Paul Hodes has spent more than $235,000 in taxpayer money to print and send mass mailers across his district in the first half of this year, an amount that tops what all but a fraction of congressmen have spent on such mail in recent years. All told, in less than two years in Congress, Hodes has sent out more than a million pieces of mass mail.

Federal law allows congressmen to tap their office budgets to send mail to their constituents, but in an election year the colorful, glossy mailers could easily be mistaken for campaign pamphlets. Hodes's latest, titled "Update on Gas Prices," features three pictures of the congressman, including one of Hodes pumping gas for a constituent in Concord, interspersed with information on Hodes's efforts "to reduce gas prices for middle-class New Hampshire families."

Lawmakers sending out so-called franked mailers is a tradition older than the United States, and the practice is nothing new for New Hampshire's representatives in Congress. Still, Hodes's expenditures are extraordinary by almost any measure.

Hodes's mass mail costs far outpace those of his predecessor, Charlie Bass, and of colleague Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, as well as all but a small number of congressmen in recent years, according to press accounts and compilations by the nonprofit National Taxpayers Union.

Hodes, a Concord Democrat, said he's proud of his efforts to stay in touch with constituents, that the mailing list is nonpartisan and that constituents often thank him for reaching out to them.

"They say it's a refreshing change to hear from their member of Congress," Hodes said Friday at a press conference after signing up to run for a second term.

A bipartisan panel vets all such mailers, Hodes noted. The franking commission has strict rules, including one that restricts the number of times the words "I" or "me" can be used per page. Specific reference to an election is banned, as are mailers within 90 days of a primary or general election, which means both Hodes and Shea-Porter are done with such mailers until after the November elections.

Not everyone praises Hodes's mail practices. The mailers have been hit on the Monitor's letters page and on the editorial page of the Union Leader, with opinion-writers calling the mailers a waste of taxpayer dollars for a purpose that, they say, looks like electioneering.

"They are full color, they are glossy, they are indistinguishable from campaign-style mail voters are used to getting in the closing weeks of a campaign," said Fergus Cullen, chairman of the state's Republican Party.

In the 1st Congressional District, Shea-Porter has spent just more than $100,000 on mass mailers this year, less than half of Hodes's total. Most of those mailers were oversized postcards targeted to specific areas and were sent to announce town hall meetings from Auburn to Plaistow, according to her reports. She also sent two larger mass mailers, one about stimulus checks that Chief of Staff Harry Gural said was sent at the urging of the treasury secretary. Hodes sent a similar mailer to the his district.

Gural said the mailers, which always list ways to reach Shea-Porter's office, inspire some constituents to call seeking help for their problems. "We do get a bump or spike in people calling after we send out a mailer," he said.

Cullen criticized the representatives for working from mailing lists of registered voters, rather than sending out the mailers simply addressed to "postal patron." He argues that there is no way to know whether the representatives sort their lists based on party affiliation.

Representatives from Shea-Porter's and Hodes's offices say that their lists are stripped of party data. Gural said Shea-Porter needed to use a voter file because her predecessor, Jeb Bradley, didn't leave a constituent list behind for her. They save on printing and mailing costs by sending only to addresses that they know are good, Gural said.

Franked mailing, which allows lawmakers to send official mail by signing their signature rather than affixing a stamp, dates back to England in the 1700s. The practice was made an American law by the First Congress in 1789, according to a Senate history website. It's been controversial since the beginning, with rumors in the 1800s of members franking home their own laundry or giving their signatures to friends for wider use.

Hodes's 2008 postage costs, for four mailers, so far this year amount to nearly 10 times what his predecessor, representative Charlie Bass, spent in all of 2006, according to numbers from the National Taxpayers Union. Hodes has spent $133,345.76 on mass postage this year. Bass spent $13,760 in 2006.

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