Opinion: Tsongas holds on for a win

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Niki Tsongas, the widow of onetime presidential candidate Paul Tsongas, prevailed in Tuesday’s Democratic primary for an open House seat in Massachusetts, but by a smaller margin than most people had anticipated.

And although she’s now the prohibitive favorite to win the general election in about a month, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are sure to cast a shadow over the race -- her Republican opponent, Paul Ogonowski, is the brother of the pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, which was hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center.

Niki Tsongas won 36% of the vote in a five-person race to gain her party’s nomination for the seat that longtime Rep. Martin Meehan, a Democrat, vacated to become a college president. Tsongas’ opponents were all veteran politicians, whereas she has never held elective office -- and that almost tripped her up. Lowell City Councilwoman Eileen Donoghue stressed the experience angle and finished a strong second with 31% of the vote; polls earlier in the year had shown Tsongas -- whose husband once represented the district -- with a much larger lead.

Ogonowksi, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, also is a first-time candidate, so that issue will be a wash. And a simple look at the numbers shows why it would be a major upset for Tsongas to lose their face-off on Oct 16: About 55,000 votes were cast in the Democratic race, compared with about 13,000 in the GOP contest, figures that reflect the district’s political tilt.

Tsongas’ likely election would make her the latest in a long line of women who decided to pursue the family business after the deaths of their politician husbands -- on Capitol Hill it’s known as the ‘widows mandate.’ California’s 55-member House delegation includes three lawmakers who won seats their husbands had held: Reps. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), Lois Capps (D-Santa Barbara) and Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento). Traditionally, the widows capture the offices in the immediate aftermath of their husbands’ deaths. Tsongas is unusual in that her husband passed away more than 10 years ago.

-- Don Frederick