Tsongas whirls into Day One in D.C.
WASHINGTON - Freshly sworn in, Niki Tsongas strode onto the House floor yesterday, swiped her new voting card, and pushed a green button to support a children's healthcare bill - casting the first vote in Congress by a Tsongas in almost 23 years.
Tsongas held her voting card in the air and waved to the gallery upstairs, where family and friends cheered. She beamed, ignoring cries of "Order! Order!" from a disgruntled colleague on the Republican side.
"It felt great," said Tsongas, the widow of former US senator Paul Tsongas, a few moments later. "It felt wonderful to be able to make that vote on behalf of the children."
Tsongas won a special election in the Fifth Congressional District on Tuesday, then had less than 24 hours to savor the victory and thank voters in Massachusetts. She flew to Washington on Wednesday night in time to join Democrats in the unsuccessful effort yesterday to overturn President Bush's veto of a bill to expand a popular children's health insurance program.
Tsongas, 61, had made the State Children's Health Insurance Program a key issue in her campaign, and Massachusetts and House officials worked to rush her into office in time for the vote.
Unlike new members of Congress installed in a regular election cycle, Tsongas didn't have the luxury of several weeks to attend orientation, hire a staff, find housing, or make other preparations. Instead, her first day shifted quickly and frequently between ceremony and work, between the dramatic and the mundane.
Through it all, the day abounded with memories of her husband, who died in 1997 after battling cancer.
The first call at Niki Tsongas's new office - from the House physician, asking about some forms - came in at about 8:55 a.m., a few minutes before her arrival. With no one yet hired to answer the phones, Deborah Kearney picked up the receiver. "Good morning," said Kearney, a longtime staffer for Paul Tsongas; 33 years ago, Kearney's first job had been to answer the phones after he first won the Fifth District congressional seat. "The office of Congresswoman-elect Niki Tsongas. May I help you?"
Tsongas arrived a few minutes later, joined by family and friends.
After the 1974 election, she had walked into modest quarters in the Cannon House Office Building with her newly elected husband and their 1-year-old daughter, Ashley, and watched as Paul sat down and gave his chair a playful first spin.
This time, she arrived with Ashley, now 33, as well as daughters Katina, 30, and Molly, 26.
"It tells you how life evolves," Tsongas said, thinking about it later, after her three daughters held the Bible at a ceremonial swearing-in at the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, after a formal oath on the House floor.
Tsongas's office is spacious, a suite in the Rayburn House Office Building occupied most recently by Martin T. Meehan, who resigned in his eighth term to become chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. If she is reelected next year, she'll be bumped to humbler quarters.
"Oh my goodness," she said, as she stepped into the office. "This will take a little getting used to."
Tsongas posed for pictures with family, campaign aides, and close friends. Paul Tsongas's sisters were there - his twin, Thaleia Tsongas Schlesinger, who had donated bone marrow to him a year before his death, and his half-sister, Vicki Peters - as was his longtime chief of staff and presidential campaign manager, Dennis Kanin, with his wife, Carol.
"I'm so excited, I'm going to start crying," Carol Kanin said. "You look gorgeous," she told the congresswoman.
When the House Chamber opened at 10 a.m., Tsongas was one of the first to arrive. She sat with Representative Barney Frank of Newton and greeted a stream of new colleagues. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, hugged Tsongas, and waved her own fist in the air. Pelosi, who campaigned on Tsongas's behalf in Massachusetts, stepped up and clasped both of Tsongas's hands.
When Tsongas took the oath a few moments later, her raised hand shook visibly, and her face welled with emotion. But her voice was steady when she officially accepted the post with a simple "I do."
Representative Edward J. Markey of Malden, the dean of the state's all-Democrat delegation and a House colleague of Paul Tsongas in the mid-1970s, followed with a speech. He shared Niki Tsongas's biography - military daughter, social worker, lawyer, educator, community leader, mother of three - and reminded the House of her late husband.
"Niki and Paul were soul mates, and [she was] his strongest supporter," Markey said. "She was at Paul's side when he ran for the presidency in 1992 and when he fought so valiantly against the cancer that finally claimed him in 1997."
Later in the day, Tsongas learned that she will be assigned to the Armed Services Committee, one of her preferences, but had not yet heard the subcommittee on which she will sit. "One step at a time," she said.
Her office had no nameplate, but in the afternoon the suite was filled - with vases of flowers, with friends, with the trappings of celebration. As 5 p.m. approached, people started to filter out, and Tsongas cleared away the leftover sandwiches. Then she got to work making phone calls, not far from a half-eaten sheetcake. In the adjoining entry room, an arrangement of flowers carried a card from the Kennedys ("Congratulations - wish we could be there. Ted and Vicki"). Next to it, an aspiring aide had already dropped a résumé and cover letter, looking for work. 