WASHINGTON, D.C. — It’s 9 p.m. on Monday night and Charla Neuman is still working.

But she’s not at work. Rather, Neuman, the press secretary for Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, is sitting at a bar table in The Monocle, a brass-and-board eatery behind the Hart Senate Office Building frequented by lobbyists, senators and legislative staff. On this night, Neuman and three other legislative aides from Cantwell’s office called it quits a little early — 6:15 p.m. — to get dinner.

Over the course of three hours, the group grouses about an expected Republican attempt to attach a recently defeated energy bill to a popular, $318 billion transportation bill. Also discussed is Attorney General John Ashcroft’s rumored fear of calico cats, a creature he believes to be a sign of the devil, according to one prominent Democrat pundit. That brings a few laughs.

But mostly, the group of twenty and thirtysomethings is silent, except for a clicking sound emanating from their laps. Throughout dinner and a couple rounds of drinks, they are busy e-mailing on hand-held, wireless Blackberry machines. Every few seconds, another e-mail goes out and another, signaled by a chime, comes in. They are sending messages to newspaper reporters, Cantwell constituents, other Senate offices, and even each other.

“Put it down, put it down,” Neuman laughs at one point to legislative aide Angela Becker-Dippmann as the two call a truce to a 10-minute wireless e-mail dual.

So much for leaving work at work.

Though The Monocle is not a nightly destination for work and play, the hour into which the work day extends is typical for the Cantwell staff, as well as the staffs of 99 other senators and 425 U.S. representatives. Behind the members of Congress voters send to Washington, D.C., there are thousands — yes, thousands — of staffers doing the work to keep their bosses informed on the issues and to answer constituents questions and rants.

Whether they go by the title of legislative assistant, legislative director or press secretary, congressional staff are at the center of the nation’s political youth movement. In Cantwell’s office, the average age of staff members is about 35. On the other side of the Capitol, in Rep. Rick Larsen’s office, the average age is just scraping the bottom side of 30. Though many of them are too young to run for office themselves, they are the backbone of the “customer service” members of Congress offer their constituents. They are also the people who make the nation’s capital a 24-hour working city.

At the start of the Iraq War, for instance, Rep. Larsen’s office received thousands of constituent letters within a few days. Almost every one of those letters had to be read, researched, then answered. While Larsen will answer many letters himself, legislative assistant Lindsey Lemmert Radley responds to the bulk of them.

“I am probably the person most chained to her desk,” Lemmert Radley said from office, a converted restroom.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, in Cantwell’s office, the volume of mail is even higher. Noel Frame, one of several legislative assistants tasked with keeping up with correspondence from Washington state, averages about 100 e-mails from constituents each day. The office’s press secretary, Neuman, said almost every one of those letters must be researched and answered.

“Just about all of them get a response,” she said.

Cramped times on the Hill

Where legislative aides do their work is based on a congressional hierarchy. Senate offices are larger than those given to members of the House. Newer senators and House members — like Cantwell and Larsen — tend to have smaller offices than long-serving members of Congress.

What this means for the Larsen staff is that they have perhaps a third of the space — about 1,000 square feet — allocated to Sen. Cantwell’s staff. Based on the number of employees the two members of Congress employ, this makes sense. About 48 people work for Cantwell between the capital and Washington state, less than half of whom are in the D.C. office at one time. Eight Larsen staffers call their Longworth Building office home most of the year.

While the office dividers in Cantwell’s office lead her staff to joke about their “cubicle farm,” the minute spaces in Larsen’s office really cram people together. In the room Larsen press secretary Abbey Blake shares with two legislative assistants and Larsen’s legislative director — dubbed the “chimp cage” — it is a challenge for staffers to stay out of each others’ way.

But the space is not an impediment to the work that needs to get done, nor is the pay. Staffers start in the office, according to Blake, at about $23,000 a year, but can earn well over $40,000 a year. The wage scale is similar in Cantwell’s office, where the staff is expected to provide service to constituents in the entire state. Larsen represents about 600,000 people in Washington’s Second Congressional District.

Almost every day Congress is in session, work starts around 8 a.m. in congressional offices and typically doesn’t end officially until 9 p.m. Both Blake and Neuman say the long hours are necessary for staying in touch with a state that is three hours behind Washington, D.C.

Even after the day’s calls to journalists are made, letters answered, and bills researched for senators and House members, a number of staffers stay in touch with their work via cell phone and wireless e-mail — whether they are cooking dinner, out on the town, or on a plane to or back from Washington state. In Cantwell’s office, the Blackberry wireless devices have earned the nickname “Crackberry” for their addictive nature. It is not uncommon for some staffers to answer e-mails from the press, congressional members or constituents as late as 2 a.m.

All this work is necessary, said Rep. Larsen. Sitting on a black leather couch in his fifth-floor office during a 1:45 p.m. lunch appointment — his lunch — Larsen has the ears of both Blake and his chief of staff, Jeff Bjornstad. First, there is business. Larsen is keeping up with a move by Republicans in the Senate to attach their energy bill to the transportation bill. He’s not happy about it.

“I can understand that they want to attach this $31 billion subsidy to the transportation bill,” he says with a wry smile.

The background he needed to make that statement likely came out of the research done by his staff. Without them, he would not be able to find out what was in, for example, the multivolume budget recently proposed by President Bush. Even with them working on it, keeping an eye on public finance is time intensive.

“You spend a day and a half pouring over it,” he said.

Why they bother

With the long hours and wages that force most congressional staffers to house share just to afford D.C. rent that can top $1,200 a month for a one-room efficiency, it can be difficult for someone from outside Capitol Hill culture to see the draw of congressional staff life.

But in the offices and hallways of congressional office buildings, the payoff is evident in the energy among the young staffers. Most paid staffers start working for members of Congress right out of college. Others don’t wait that long, taking low-paid intern positions or unpaid fellowship positions just for the chance to be attached to the legislative process. The draw, said Neuman, was enough to get her to show up sight unseen at Larsen’s office to ask for a job. She got it then, last year, accepted a position with Cantwell’s office.

She said job seekers looking to get on with a congressional office are usually in luck, as members of Congress are always looking for new people to replace those lost to other career opportunities.

“I moved out here without a job and found one before I found an apartment,” she said.

She and her colleagues keep working, session after session, year after year — without a guarantee of continued work due to elections — because they see themselves as representing the people of Washington as much as their elected bosses do. Sometimes that representation is general, while other times it strays into the arena of special interest, as is the case with Cantwell staffer and Boeing expert Travis Sullivan.

“Essentially, we are here to speak for Boeing,” he said.

However, he is quick to separate himself from Boeing lobbyists, noting that Cantwell’s office recently put pressure on the aerospace company to abandon a plan to deny overtime to some military veterans it employs.

“If it’s speaking for people back in the state, that takes precedence,” he said.

This November, some Washington congressional staffers will have their jobs on the line. In November, Rick Larsen will run four a fourth term in the U.S. House. Washington’s senior senator, Patty Murray, is also up for re-election in November. Cantwell is up for re-election in 2008.