Cash for Chuck

With personal assets of perhaps $6,000,000, Illinois' Senator Charles Percy is hardly prototypical of the impoverished public servant whose wife must make do with a Republican thrift-shop coat.

Still--not entirely to his distress--Freshman Percy has attracted a lot of expensive attention, the kind that can quickly devour the $279,306 annual office budget that he is allowed by the Government. An average of 1,500 letters a day cascade into Percy's office; his secretaries answer 200 telephone calls daily--a volume probably matched only by that of New York's Senator Robert Kennedy. He has traveled 150,000 miles to speak in more than 60 cities. Having exhausted his regular budget, Percy has poured his $30,000 senatorial salary and about $50,000 of his private funds into his office operation.

When the high cost of Percy's popularity became clear last summer, his former campaign manager, Tom Houser, laid plans to round up some 200 Illinois businessmen to form "the Percy Group," contributing a total of $100,000 annually to help Chuck defray office expenses.

Last week some Washington eyebrows were arched, if only briefly, at the news of Percy's "special fund," which to date has collected about $25,000. Cynics recalled Richard Nixon's 1952 troubles when he had to deliver his nationally televised "Checkers" speech to keep from being dumped as Ike's running mate because he had accepted $18,000 in private contributions for political expenses. Funds from the Percy Group are strictly earmarked for business--as they were for Nixon. Percy himself cannot touch the money and has no need or desire to do so.

It is entirely different from the case of Connecticut Democrat Thomas Dodd, who was censured by the Senate in June for using $116,083 accumulated at testimonial dinners for paying liquor bills, home improvements and other personal expenses. That did not prevent Tom Dodd from sniping last week: "It seems strange to me that Percy was so critical of my friends' raising money for me."

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