Tsongas, Paul Efthemios

▪ 1998

      American politician (b. Feb. 14, 1941, Lowell, Mass.—d. Jan. 18, 1997, Boston, Mass.), came to national attention when he campaigned for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1992. Making a strong case for politically dangerous, painful measures to ensure reduction of the federal budget deficit, he won the New Hampshire primary and thereby nudged the party toward a policy of heightened fiscal responsibility. Following losses to Bill Clinton in a number of other important primaries, though, he withdrew from the race. Tsongas graduated (1962) from Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., spent two years in the Peace Corps, and then attended Yale Law School, receiving his degree in 1967. He began his career in politics with election to the Lowell City Council in 1968, and in 1974 he was elected his district's first Democratic representative to the U.S. Congress in some 90 years. He won election to the Senate four years later. After being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1983, Tsongas chose not to run for reelection, and upon leaving the Senate, he joined a Boston law firm. His cancer treatment, which included an experimental bone marrow transplant in 1986, was successful, and in 1991 he declared his candidacy for president. After withdrawing from that campaign, Tsongas helped found the Concord Coalition, a group formed to focus on economic problems. Late in 1992 Tsongas was diagnosed with a different type of lymphoma, which was also successfully treated, but in 1996 he underwent another bone marrow transplant to treat a disorder caused by his earlier treatment. Tsongas died after developing pneumonia following surgery to treat liver problems that also had resulted from the cancer treatments.

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