Big Oil. Big Pharma. Big Mail?

For a guy whose Blackberry is permanently attached to his hand, it may seem a little odd that Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, is raking in cash from an organization banking on the future success of what is laughingly deemed "snail mail."

Chaffetz released his financial disclosure forms Tuesday that show he has pulled in $86,238 during the reporting period from July 1 through Oct. 8. Political action committees representing letter carriers, postmasters and postal supervisors account for $7,000 of that. The same groups donated thousands in the previous reporting period as well.

There are a couple of reasons that the USPS has interest in Chaffetz. First, he's the ranking Republican on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia subcommittee. Second is his proposal to use postal workers to handle the Census.

"They like my attitude in terms of wanting to increase the relevancy of the postal service," he said.

Chaffetz has presented a bill that would allow letter carriers to be Census counters and to use postal facilities to manage the infrastructure needs of the once-a-decade count. He said there has been some talk of pilot programs to explore whether the bill is worth pursuing.

He's still raising most of his money from personal contributions. Political committees make up $35,000 of the recent filing, leaving $51,158 from individual donors. He also received $80 from political party committees.