Paul Tsongas was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on Valentine’s Day 1941, a twin to his sister Thalia, the son of Greek immigrants who ran a dry cleaning business. He swam for Dartmouth, studied at Yale Law School and Harvard’s Kennedy School, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia from 1962 to 1964, and was Peace Corps country director in the West Indies. He married Niki Sauvage in 1969, won a seat on the Lowell City Council, and in 1974 took the Fifth Congressional District, Republican since 1895, by 21 points. In 1978 he unseated Senator Edward Brooke by more than 200,000 votes.

In the Senate he was an Atari Democrat, pairing environmentalism, including the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, with a pro-business, deficit hawk message. A 1983 non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis led him to skip reelection, and he underwent a bone marrow transplant in 1986. Declared clear in 1991, he ran for president, won the 1992 New Hampshire primary, and later won Maryland, Arizona, Washington, Utah, and Massachusetts before withdrawing in March after his chief fundraiser, Nicholas Rizzo, was found to have embezzled over a million dollars. He co-founded the Concord Coalition and died on January 18, 1997, at 55.

• His campaign printed bumper stickers explaining how to pronounce his name.
• He quipped that anyone who thought government and efficiency belonged in the same sentence could get counseling.
• Swimming in YMCA masters meets after his transplant, he said breaststroke was an athletic event and butterfly was the political statement.
• Asked about middle class tax cuts, he said he was not trying to play Santa Claus.
• His widow Niki won his old Fifth District seat in a 2007 special election.