UPPER MARLBORO -- If a congressman works really hard and brings home lots of bacon, is that enough these days to overcome voter contempt for Washington and the feeling that government spends too much?
If a lawmaker has a voting record that seems too liberal for many people in his district, can he still win forgiveness by always being around to help with their problems?
The political maxim that people hate Congress but love their own doting congressman is being severely tested across the nation this fall, but probably nowhere more than here, where Rep. Steny H. Hoyer is relentlessly wooing the hearts and votes of Southern Marylanders.
In the space of just four hours last week, the seven-term Democrat cut ribbons on $28 billion worth of Hoyer-sponsored largess: a $12 million laboratory for the Agricultural Research Service -- the first building added to the Beltsville complex in 22 years -- and a $15 million National Wildlife Visitor Center at the Patuxent Environmental Science Center in Laurel. The 20,000-acre wildlife breeding area was expanded at Mr. Hoyer's urging to include 8,000 acres of forest that former President Ronald Reagan wanted to bulldoze for private development.
Between the two events, the congressman stopped at a trade fair, where Prince George's County police officials boasted about the success of an anti-gang program for teen-agers financed with grant money Mr. Hoyer tucked into the budget. The congressman was escorted through the fair by Wallace O. Stephens, a Republican businessman and president of the Prince George's County Chamber of Commerce, who said he ignored appeals for help from Mr. Hoyer's GOP opponent.
"Steny is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that means something to me personally," Mr. Stephens said.
Meanwhile, television and radio ads were beaming into the four other counties of the 5th Congressional District -- Calvert, Charles, Anne Arundel and St. Mary's -- noting Mr. Hoyer's successful efforts to spare naval facilities from closing and to finance cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay.
Facing a low-octane challenge from Donald J. Devine, a former Reagan personnel director whose tenure was so controversial Mr. Devine couldn't win confirmation to a second term from a Republican-controlled Senate, Mr. Hoyer observed: "You'd think there wouldn't be any contest, wouldn't you?"
But he can't afford to take any chances. Mr. Hoyer narrowly escaped defeat two years ago in a newly drawn district packed with unfamiliar and unfriendly turf. As the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House at a time when President Clinton and most other party leaders are under siege, the congressman makes a prime target for Republicans who hope sniper fire from Mr. Devine will be enough to give Mr. Hoyer a final push out the door.
"Steny Hoyer is a decent enough person, except that he is a captive of 1960s solutions, and as part of the Democratic leadership, he must vote to support President Clinton's equally outmoded ideas," Mr. Devine said in announcing his candidacy in June. "We should start term limits by giving him a fine retirement. He has just been around too long and needs some time in the private sector to understand the problems the rest of us face."
The challenger has focused on the four counties that make up the newest parts of Mr. Hoyer's district -- all of which the congressman lost in the 1992 election to his Republican opponent, Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. Though mostly Democrats, voters there tend to be more conservative than those in Mr. Hoyer's boyhood home of Prince George's County.
In press releases and ads, the Republican challenger pushes the buttons considered likely to reach what in President Reagan's day was called a boll weevil audience. The incumbent, Mr. Devine says, is soft on crime, weak on defense and favors gun control and gays in the military.
The first two assertions are open to debate. Mr. Hoyer was a chief sponsor of the "three-time loser" mandatory-sentencing provision in the crime bill enacted this year. But he also made an appeal for leniency at the sentencing of a family friend with two prior drug offenses who had been convicted of armed robbery. On defense, the congressman has been more hawkish than most Democrats long before it was fashionable. But he also voted against the U.S. assault on Iraqi forces that drove them from Kuwait in 1991.
On gun control and gay tolerance, Mr. Devine's assertions are pretty much on target.
"He comes down here, and he talks like he's one of us, but he goes back to Washington and votes like an ultra-liberal," said state Sen. James C. Simpson, a Charles County Democrat.
Probably most hurtful to Mr. Hoyer is the challenger's use of the congressman's own heated words on the House floor proclaiming himself a "tax-tax, spend-spend Democrat."
The statement was taken from a speech in favor of the proposed balanced budget amendment in which Mr. Hoyer, an unabashed believer in government spending, flailed against hypocrites who try to gain more spending for their districts but lack courage to vote for tax increases or other spending cuts to pay for it.
"I think that ad's going to hurt him," said state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., a Prince George's Democrat and longtime Hoyer ally. "He won't lose, but he won't get the kind of victory someone of his stature, with the kind of record he has, deserves."
But Mr. Devine, at age 57 two years older than Mr. Hoyer, is not in the best position to exploit this year's anti-politician climate. He was a conservative political activist before his time in the Reagan administration and has earned his living since then as a political consultant.
Mr. Devine's tenure as director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was considered a reign of terror by federal employees -- who number 57,000 in the 5th Congressional District -- because his agenda called for cutting benefits, limiting raises and eliminating jobs. He boasts of saving the government $6.3 billion, largely by raising the deductibles and co-payments for federal workers' health insurance and promoting legislation that made the federal retirement program less generous.
As a result, most Democrats vociferously opposed Mr. Devine's bid for a second term. He also lost crucial Republican support after Loretta Cornelius, his former deputy at OPM, told the Senate Government Affairs Committee that he had asked her to lie to the committee about his maneuvers to continue running the agency after his first term expired.
Mr. Devine denied her charge, saying that Mrs. Cornelius had misunderstood him. But he asked President Reagan to withdraw his nomination after Republican senators told him it would be rejected.
Mr. Hoyer reminds voters of the Loretta Cornelius incident in radio spots, which Devine supporters say is a sign the incumbent is worried.
"So far, this campaign is between Steny and not-Steny," said Bill Black, an aide to Mr. Hoyer. "Incumbents have such a disadvantage this year, we have to let people know who not-Steny is."
Mr. Devine's main exposure to voters is waving to them from the median strip of highways during rush hours, sometimes holding a sign urging them to honk if they want lower taxes.
Though he is bright, charming and a more adroit public speaker than Mr. Hoyer, the challenger does not make many public appearances. He had none on his schedule last week. And his experience in Washington has left him wary of the press. He said he was too busy to be interviewed for this article.
Raising money has been a problem. Mr. Devine has tapped a cross section of friends from the Reagan administration and conservative GOP politicians, but he will probably end up with no more than one-fourth of Mr. Hoyer's total.
It also appears Mr. Hoyer may have won over many of those who voted against him in 1992.
"He lost here because nobody knew him," said Anne Marum, executive director of the St. Mary's County Chamber of Commerce. After Mr. Hoyer blocked the proposed closure of the Naval Electronics Systems Engineering Activity center and smoothed the path of new jobs to the Patuxent Naval Air Station, she said, the attitude changed. "Those facilities are central to the business community down here."
First elected to the state Senate at 27 and in public office almost continuously since, Mr. Hoyer fits the definition of a professional politician. He lives it, breathes it and loves it. He takes heart from comments like those of Gilbert Purschwhitz, 81, of Ritchie, who remembers Mr. Hoyer's help with a grading problem on his property 18 years ago.
"There are some advantages to being an incumbent," the congressman said. "If people don't know you, it's easy to become a caricature. It's a different thing when people know who you are."