Tsongas, Niki, 1946-

<p>Nicola Dickson "Niki" Sauvage Tsongas (/ˈsɒŋɡəs/; born April 26, 1946) is an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts from 2007 to 2019. She held the seat formerly held by her husband, the late Paul Tsongas, for the district numbered as Massachusetts's 5th congressional district from 2007 to 2013 and as Massachusetts's 3rd congressional district from 2013 to 2019. She is a member of the Democratic Party. In August 2017 Tsongas announced that she would not seek another term in the November 2018 election.</p>

<p>Tsongas was born Nicola Dickson Sauvage on April 26, 1946, in Chico, California. Her mother, Marian Susan (née Wyman), was an artist and copywriter, and her father, Colonel Russell Elmer Sauvage, was an engineer in the United States Army Air Forces who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. Tsongas graduated in 1964 from Narimasu American High School in Japan while her father was stationed at Fuchu Air Force Base. She spent one year at Michigan State University, then transferred to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1968 with a Bachelor of Arts in religion. After college she moved to New York City, where she took a job as a social worker for the Department of Welfare. Tsongas earned her Juris Doctor from Boston University and started Lowell's first all-female law practice.</p>

<p>Tsongas interned in Arlington, Virginia, for presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy during summer 1967; at a party there she met Paul Tsongas, then an aide to Republican Congressman Brad Morse. In 1969, she married Paul; they had three daughters: Ashley, Katina, and Molly. Paul served in the House from Massachusetts's 5th congressional district from 1975 to 1979, and the Senate from 1979 to 1985. After being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, he declined to seek a second term in the Senate; he resigned the day before his term expired. The Tsongases moved from Washington, D.C., back to Massachusetts for Paul to undergo treatments. After seemingly being cured of his disease, in 1992 Paul ran for the Democratic nomination for president; he came in third behind former California Governor Jerry Brown and eventual winner Bill Clinton. Paul's cancer later returned; he died of pneumonia and liver failure on January 18, 1997.</p>

<p>In 2006 Niki Tsongas won a special election for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from northeastern Massachusetts. She was the first woman to serve in Congress from Massachusetts in a quarter century. On Capitol Hill, Tsongas used her seat on the Armed Services Committee to combat sexual harassment in the military and to open opportunities for women servicemembers. She also worked to improve environmental regulations and set aside more land for the National Park System. “I hope one of the views I’ve had is that if you change, help to change an institution,” she said, reflecting on her career. Whether it was reforms in the military or helping more women win election to Congress, she continued, “As we push the institution, it helps to push a country.”</p>

<p>Niki Tsongas was born Nicola (Niki) Dickson Sauvage in Chico, California, on April 26, 1946, to Russell Elmer and Marian Sauvage. Her father served in the United States Air Force during the Korean War and remained in the service for 20 years, which meant the family moved frequently between air bases within the continental United States and abroad. She graduated from Narimasu American High School in Tokyo, Japan, in 1964. She briefly attended Michigan State University before transferring to Smith College where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in religion in 1968. While visiting family in Northern Virginia between semesters during the summer of 1967, she met Paul Efthemios Tsongas who was interning for Representative Frank Bradford Morse of Massachusetts. The couple married two years later and had three daughters: Ashley, Katina, and Molly.</p>

<p>Employed as a social worker in New York after college, Tsongas traveled to New England every weekend in 1968, either to New Hampshire to campaign for presidential candidate Eugene Joseph McCarthy or to Massachusetts to help her fiancé Paul run for city council. “The experience made me love—and I have always loved—the process of getting elected,” Tsongas said of her early days on the campaign trail. After marrying in 1969, Niki Tsongas moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, where Paul had begun serving as a deputy assistant attorney general and city councilman. Tsongas worked as a paralegal, high school teacher, and adoption caseworker. In 1971 she began studying law at Boston University but left after one year to raise her family while her husband focused on his political career. “Politics is a tough life to be in.... I never felt my children should be orphaned by it. I stayed home with them. It was the right thing to do.”</p>