Thursday, 4:30 PM
Tsongas, Ogonowski to face off in 5th District race
(Evan Richman/Globe Staff)
Niki Tsongas on the campaign trail.
By Matt Viser, Globe Staff
Niki Tsongas has captured the Democratic nomination in the Fifth Congressional District.
Tsongas, the widow of the late US Senator Paul Tsongas, will now face Republican Jim Ogonowski, who handily defeated Tom Tierney in the Republican primary.
Tsongas beat her closest rival, Lowell City Councilor Eileen Donoghue, by four percentage points, with three other candidates trailing further behind.
The election for the country's lone open congressional seat now largely becomes a race between two political newcomers who will fight to occupy a seat that became vacant when US Representative Martin T. Meehan, who had held it for 14 years, announced in March that he was resigning to become chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
The general election is slated for Oct. 16.
"We have another six weeks to go, and they will not be simple," Tsongas said.
"We can make government work again, but I need your help. Tonight is just a small victory on our way to October," Ogonowski said in prepared remarks.
Tsongas, who is seeking to become the first woman to represent Massachusetts in Congress since 1982, has touted her Washington political connections and pledged to get troops out of Iraq by March 2008.
Ogonowski, seeking to become the state's first Republican Congressman since 1996, has used his outsider status to rail against Washington and argued that troops should remain in Iraq indefinitely.
They both relied heavily on their life stories to promote their campaigns. Tsongas tied herself to her late husband, who represented the district from 1975 to 1979 and was later a senator and presidential frontrunner. Ogonowski's brother was one of the pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, which was hijacked Sept. 11, 2001, and flown into the World Trade Center, a tragic story that has helped him grab national headlines and television interviews.
Ogonowski has also been leaning on his 28-year career as an Air Force lieutenant colonel, arguing that he will help protect Americans in the "global war on terrorism" and won't allow Congress to "cut and run."
The general election race will also include independent candidates Patrick Murphy, a 26-year-old bricklayer from Lowell, and Kurt Hayes, a Boxborough businessman, and Constitution Party candidate Kevin Thompson, who is running largely to draw attention to a party that currently has about 50 members in Massachusetts.
In a special election that largely took place in the summer months, candidates struggled for attention, trying to grab voters by hosting movie screenings, giving out free ice cream, and last week even hosting a wiffle ball tournament.
The Republican National Congressional Committee this spring invited Ogonowski, a 49-year-old farmer from Dracut, to attend a school for candidates to train him in fundraising, polling, and forming a campaign organization.
The party has been waiting until after the primary to decide whether it will pour money into Ogonowski's campaign.
Tsongas, 61, who for the past 10 years has been the dean of external affairs at Middlesex Community College, is well ahead in fundraising, carrying nearly $500,000 as of Aug. 15, nearly five times more than Ogonowksi.
Click here for town-by-town results in the Democratic race and here for results in the Republican race.
