After serving Massachusetts’ third district for 10 years, Rep. Niki Tsongas is finally retiring, and passing on one last message to her colleagues: The role of Congress is more important now than ever before.
“In Congress, you see a sleeping giant awakening,” Tsongas said in an interview with Boston Public Radio Thursday. “Our role is becoming ever-more apparent and necessary, and that’s all to the good.”
Tsongas announced that she will not be seeking another term in 2018, instead taking time to focus on her family and three grandchildren. “I have learned in life that there is a time for endings and for new beginnings,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “After much thought, I have decided that this is one of those times. The time feels right most especially because of my desire to spend more time enjoying and celebrating my wonderful and growing family.”
When Tsongas was elected in 2007, the Lowell Democrat was the first woman from Massachusetts to serve in Congress in 25 years. “Women can’t win if women don’t run,” she said. “I saw an opportunity to run, [and] I also knew the tremendous opportunity to make a difference that this office offers.”
Tsongas described her position as “a job that requires everything of you, as it should” — and one that she can no longer give her life to. “When I came into office, none of my children were married, we had no grandchildren, [now] all of that has changed,” she said. “I started to feel the tug of all of that … I just felt that this other side of life needed some time, too.”
Women can't win if women don't run.
With the Republican party in control of both houses of Congress and a Republican president, Tsongas said one of her greatest challenges — and a challenge presented to her fellow Democrats — is to bridge the partisan divide.
“We’re elected for good times and bad,” she said. “It’s certainly not an easy time. But on the other hand, it’s a time in which, even more so, calls for strong Democratic voices to articulate alternative ways.”
“I certainly have found it to be true in the 10 years that I’ve been there, despite the deeply partisan atmosphere," Tsongas continued. “I still found ways to work across the aisle.”
Tsongas, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, applauded an increasing amount of U.S. military generals who have spoken out against Neo-Nazism and white supremacy, following violence in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend.
“These services are rooted in protecting our country,” Tsongas said. “Not that long ago, [during] World War II … we were engaged in a fight to the end to defeat Nazism. To have a president who seems to have the back of Neo-Nazis must be very, very concerning to them.”
President Trump’s divisive language, according to Tsongas, is dangerous to the safety of the country. “The military services are an institution that depend upon cohesion among the ranks,” she said. “You cannot fight the fight and win the fight if you’re fighting with each other.”
“To have a president who is so divisive in his tone, I am sure, is very deeply concerning to them, just in their ability to do their job,” Tsongas continued. “That filters down. Our president is the commander-in-chief.”
Tsongas’ official retirement will go into effect in 16 months, in the first race for a Massachusetts congressional seat without an incumbent since 2013.
To hear the full interview with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio player above.
