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ICYMI: Rep. Kelly’s Constituent Service Operation Featured in Butler Eagle

February 1, 2016

“Fully invested is just what Kelly is”

WASHINGTON — The Butler Eagle today published an extended feature on the constituent services operation of U.S. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), with a particular focus on the congressman’s handling of wide-ranging constituent correspondence.

Excerpts fromResponding to queries big job:

Butler’s U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3rd, is no stranger to constituent communications. Kelly’s office says it receives more than 1,000 e-mails, calls, letters and faxes each week.

Most of the communication — about 85 percent — comes via e-mail, said Thomas Qualtere, Kelly’s communications director.

The office holds a full staff meeting each week to review all its correspondence, update the congressman and make those decisions.

Many times the responses are handled by staffers, Qualtere or Kelly’s chief of staff Matt Stroia. Sometimes, though, a particular issue or topic catches Kelly’s eye and motivates him to spend personal time getting involved.

Kelly pointed to three cases — two veterans he helped replace or obtain missing service medals in 2014, and a 2011 letter from a grandmother that moved him to help author a bill helping pediatric cancer patients — as examples of that.

“When you get into this job, you start to be able to touch peoples’ lives in different ways than any other (position),” Kelly said.

He said he doesn’t see it as a choice or a trade-off, and doesn’t accept the conventional wisdom that members of Congress have to choose between being authentic and personal, and reaching out to their constituencies en masse.

“I think you’re either authentic or you’re not,” Kelly said. “It’s just an expanded family, and I’m really in a position of ‘my gosh, we can really help some of these folks.’”

But the job is so big that Kelly employs a full-time staffer, legislative correspondent Brendan Fulmer, in Washington who handles all the office’s incoming correspondence. Fulmer sorts it and assigns a response letter based on the writer’s topic.

The congressman also employs five full-time “caseworkers” who are based throughout the 3rd District and deal first with correspondence that is sent to Kelly’s district offices in Sharon, Butler and Erie.

Kelly said his approach — “build the best customer service team in the country” — comes from his years running car dealerships in Butler County.

Fully invested is just what Kelly is. The congressman says he won’t shy away from the online exchanges, which can often be anonymous and brutal.

“I would be a fool to say ‘I only want to hear good news.’ That’s a Pollyanna attitude and that is not reality,” Kelly said. “The one thing I really appreciate is when it’s a civil remark.”

Qualtere said the congressman has more than 15,000 “friends” on Facebook and more than 5,000 followers on Twitter — numbers he says put Kelly among the most engaged federal officials on social media.

Stroia and Brad Moore, Kelly’s district director, say the office’s plan to grow Kelly’s online presence has been simple.

“It’s simply the congressman being the congressman,” Stroia said.

 

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