Paul Tsongas

Tsongas was born in Lowell, Massachusetts,[1] along with a twin sister, Thaleia, to a once working-class family who came to own a very successful dry cleaning business in Lowell. His father, Efthemios George Tsongas, was a Greek immigrant, and his mother, Katina (née Pappas; originally Panagiotopoulos), was of Greek descent.[2]

After graduating from Lowell High School in 1958, Tsongas attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1962 with an A.B. in economics, then Yale Law School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University before settling in Lowell, Massachusetts. While at Dartmouth, Tsongas was a member of the men's swimming team. He picked up the sport again, 27 years later, in 1986, after doctors suggested swimming as a way to rebuild his lung capacity while he was recovering from lymphoma. At a YMCA Masters meet, Tsongas once remarked, "I always used to say breaststroke was an athletic event and the butterfly was the political statement."[3]

He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia from 1962 to 1964,[4] and as Peace Corps Country Director in the West Indies from 1967 to 1968.

In 1967, Tsongas – working as an aide to Congressman F. Bradford Morse – met Niki Sauvage, who was spending the summer in Arlington, Virginia. They were married in 1969, and had three daughters: Ashley, Katina, and Molly. Niki Tsongas was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts from 2007 to 2019.

When Tsongas ran for office, out of concern that people would pronounce the silent T in his last name, the campaign distributed bumper stickers saying "Tsenator Tsongas".

Tsongas first entered politics as a city councilor, elected to the Lowell City Council in 1969 where he served two consecutive terms. Tsongas went on to serve as a county commissioner of Middlesex County, Massachusetts. In 1974, he ran for United States House of Representatives from a district anchored by Lowell. The district had elected only three Democrats in its entire existence and had been in Republican hands continuously since 1895. However, in the massive Democratic wave of the post-Watergate election of 1974, he defeated freshman Republican Paul W. Cronin by a 21-point margin. He was reelected in 1976, becoming the first Democrat to hold the district for more than one term. Increasingly popular and well-liked in Massachusetts, in 1978 he ran for and was elected to the United States Senate, defeating incumbent Republican Edward Brooke by a 10-point margin.

In 1983, he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma[5] and in 1984 announced his retirement from the Senate. His seat went to fellow Democrat, 2004 presidential nominee and United States Secretary of State John Kerry. After undergoing a bone marrow transplant to treat the disease in 1986 and receiving a clean bill of health from doctors in 1991,[6] he returned to politics, running for his party's nomination for President in 1992. Until the 1992 campaign, Tsongas had never lost an election. He was the first former Peace Corps volunteer elected to the U.S. Senate (1978). (In 1974, he and Chris Dodd were the first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.)

In October 1979, after the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted in favor of Alaska public lands legislation, President Jimmy Carter issued a statement thanking Tsongas for his leadership in strengthening the bill.[7]

In May 1982, Tsongas was one of eight senators to vote against a $177.9 billion military authorization bill for 1983 that provided money for chemical weapons.[8]

In July 1982, Tsongas met with Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin, questioning Begin over where negotiations would fit in the event that Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat concede Israel's right to exist along with reneging the Palestinian National Covenant over calls for Israel's abolition and replacement by a secular state. Tsongas afterward stated the meetings were distressing.[9]

During a May 27, 1983 hearing on the legal effects of the Equal Rights Amendment, the first in over a decade on the amendment, Tsongas was questioned by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch over the measure, being described by the New York Times as "visibly shaken by the treatment Senator Hatch gave him". Tsongas delivered an opening statement and replied "That issue will be decided in the courts" in response to most questions by Hatch.[10]

Political positions

Tsongas was generally viewed as a social liberal and an economic moderate. He was especially known for his efforts in Congress in support of historic preservation and environmental conservation on one hand, and for his pro-business economic policies on the other.

Boott Cotton Mill, Museum and Trolley – Lowell Nat'l. Historical Park

He played a major role while in the House in the creation of Lowell National Historical Park, as well as in the establishment or expansion of a number of other National Park System areas.

Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska

He played an equally key role later in the Senate, working closely with then Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus, in successful passage of the massive Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, which had been hopelessly deadlocked in the Senate since its original passed by the House in 1978.

Relative to business and economic matters, Tsongas focused in particular on the Federal budget deficit, a cause he continued to champion even after his presidential primary campaign ended, by co-founding the Concord Coalition.

Tsongas was criticized on occasion by opponents as a Reaganomics-style politician, and as being closer to Republicans with regard to such issues. The Boston Herald editorialized that his political philosophy had "far more in common" with 1990s-era Republican Mitt Romney (who crossed over to vote for Tsongas in the 1992 primaries) than with traditional Massachusetts Democrats like Ted Kennedy.[11] In the mid-1980s, he shocked many of the members of the Americans for Democratic Action by telling them that they should focus more on economic growth than wealth redistribution.

He once quipped, "If anyone thinks the words 'government' and 'efficiency' belong in the same sentence, we have counselling available."[12]

In late 1994, Tsongas briefly led an effort to establish a third party, to be led by someone with "national authority", suggesting General Colin Powell for that role.[19] By that time, Tsongas was considered "the most popular political figure in Massachusetts".[11]

Tsongas Center, Lowell, Massachusetts

Tsongas's gravestone in Lowell Cemetery

He died on January 18, 1997, at age 55 of complications from pneumonia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.[20] His obituary in the New York Times of January 20, 1997 states:

"Mr. Tsongas, who was hospitalized on Jan. 3 with a liver problem related to his treatments for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a slow-growing cancer of the lymph system, and later developed pneumonia, died at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Mr. Tsongas made his survival from cancer an issue in his Presidential campaign when he and two of his doctors, Dr. Tak Takvorian and Dr. George P. Canellos, said he had been cancer-free since a bone-marrow transplant in 1986. In May 1996, he underwent another transplant, getting bone marrow from his twin sister, Thaleia Schlesinger, to correct myelodysplasia, a bone-marrow disorder that can occur in people who have recovered from lymph cancer.

On January 27, 1998, the Tsongas Center in Lowell was dedicated in his honor.[21]

In a special election held on October 16, 2007, his widow, Niki, won the Massachusetts Congressional seat that Tsongas once held.[22]

Preservation Massachusetts, a statewide nonprofit focused on preserving Massachusetts history, has an annual Paul Tsongas Award to honor restoration workers in the state.[23]

Massachusetts 5th district, 1974[24]

• Paul Tsongas (D) - 99,518 (60.64%)
• Paul W. Cronin (R) (inc.) - 64,596 (39.36%)

Massachusetts 5th district, 1976[25]

• Paul Tsongas (D) (inc.) - 144,217 (67.31%)
• Roger P. Durkin (D) - 70,036 (32.69%)

1978 Massachusetts United States Senate Democratic primary[26]

• Paul Tsongas - 296,915 (35.55%)
• Paul Guzzi - 258,960 (31.01%)
• Kathleen Alioto - 161,036 (19.28%)
• Howard Phillips - 65,397 (7.83%)
• Elaine Noble - 52,464 (6.28%)
• Others - 379 (0.05%)

1978 Massachusetts United States Senate election[27]

• Paul Tsongas (D) - 1,093,283 (55.06%)
• Edward Brooke (R) (inc.) - 890,584 (44.85%)
• Others - 1,833 (0.09%)

1992 United States Democratic presidential primaries

• Bill Clinton - 10,482,411 (52.01%)
• Jerry Brown - 4,071,232 (20.20%)
• Paul Tsongas - 3,656,010 (18.14%)
• Unpledged - 750,873 (3.73%)
• Bob Kerrey - 318,457 (1.58%)
• Tom Harkin - 280,304 (1.39%)
• Lyndon LaRouche - 154,599 (0.77%)
• Eugene McCarthy - 108,678 (0.54%)
• Charles Woods - 88,948 (0.44%)
• Larry Agran - 58,611 (0.29%)
• Ross Perot (write-in) - 54,755 (0.27%)
• Ralph Nader (write-in) - 35,935 (0.18%)
• Louis J. Stokes - 29,983 (0.15%)

• 1992 Democratic Party presidential primaries
• Atari Democrat

• Paul Tsongas. 1984. Heading Home. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-54130-8.

• United States Congress. "Paul Tsongas (id: T000393)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Peace Corps bio. of Paul Tsongas
• Concord Coalition bio. of Paul Tsongas
• Tsongas's campaign TV ad on YouTube
• Sen. Christopher Dodd's Tribute to Sen. Paul Tsongas (Senate — January 28, 1997) at the Wayback Machine (archived January 7, 2010)
• Ubben Lecture at DePauw University
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• C-SPAN Tsongas goes Swimming
• A Look Back at an Unorthodox Presidential Campaign 25 Years Later