YOUNG TSONGAS GETS TASTE OF POLITICS

Ashley Tsongas learned the ways of the media when her father sought presidency and developed interests in public issues.

Eighteen-year-old Ashley Tsongas thought she knew what she would tell her friends in November.

She would say: "I'm leaving. I'm going to the White House. My father got a new job." All of her friends would know her new address, and her new house would be displayed on post cards.

But that didn't happen.

Her father, former U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), pulled out of the presidential race this spring. Ashley is thankful for the rare opportunity to see the inside of a presidential campaign.

"It's not so much I was sad that we lost. But I was sad that it was over because it was so much fun," Ashley said in a recent telephone interview from the family's summer home on Cape Cod.

"In the beginning I hated it, absolutely hated it. . . . It was awful. I was stressed out completely," she said.

Picture perfect for press

"These people would tell us, `Now, you can't touch your hands to your face because the press will take a picture of you and it will look like you're picking your nose.' We'd be sitting there and we wouldn't want to touch or move or anything like that.

"And then, by the end, it became not (such) a big deal and you got used to the press. The press is unbelievable. They just swarm you. . . . But it was fun, sort of, if you elbowed them back. . . . It got to be sort of a game," said Ashley, who graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. She will attend Yale University this fall.

She says the responsibility of being the daughter of a visible politician as well as a voter pushes her to know everything she can on issues affecting our country. One of her concerns is the environment.

"I think almost everybody my age and younger is becoming aware of (the environment) much more than our parents ever were. There are adults, obviously, who are pro-environment . . . but it's almost like it's a youth movement, and I think part of being young is being aware," she explained.

Concern about environment

Ashley tries to recycle everything she can. Lowell, Mass., where she lives, just passed a law requiring recycling.

"We have to keep the environment healthy in order to maintain our own health. (Not doing so is) sort of selfish: I mean we're going to kill basically our children by doing what we're doing now," Ashley said.

One incident in the Tsongas household helped to spark her interest in the environment. Angered by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the Tsongas kids put their beliefs into action during a car ride with their father.

"(When) we pulled into an (Exxon) gas station, we said, `What are you doing?' I don't think (my dad) even thought about it, so he just turned around. We were yelling at him. It was really funny."

Ashley believes her views on the environment are an extension of a fundamental principle she learned from her father _ "that for us to be completely centered on ourselves as one person would make us worse people," she said.

Women's movement advocate

Ashley is pleased that so many kids have become involved in the environmental movement. But there is another cause in which she would like to see more young women participate.

"I think that the female generation should pay attention to the women's movement. I think there's been a lot of complacency. . . . We aren't on an equal level yet, and we have to keep trying to change our lives and get in positions of power.

"I think that people who are younger, younger women, younger girls, shouldn't see it as a sort of older women's mother-type issue," she continued.

"If kids can make a difference in the environment, kids can make a difference everywhere. . . . 'Cause if we start now, then hopefully, by the time we get older, we'll have made . . . a real dramatic difference."