Candidate for
United States Representative; District 12; Democratic Party

Tom Lantos was first elected to Congress in November 1980 + the only Democrat to defeat an un-indicted incumbent Republican in the year of the Reagan landslide.

An American by choice, Tom Lantos was born in Budapest, Hungary, on February 1, 1928. He was 16 years of age when Nazi Germany occupied his native country. As a teenager, he was placed in a Hungarian fascist forced labor camp. He succeeded in escaping and was able to survive in a safe house in Budapest set up by Swedish humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg. His story is one of the individual accounts which forms the basis of Steven Spielberg's Academy Award winning documentary about the Holocaust in Hungary, "The Last Days."

In 1947, Tom was awarded an academic scholarship to study in the United States. He attended the University of Washington in Seattle, where he received a B.A. and M.A. in Economics. He moved to San Francisco in 1950 and began graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he later received his Ph.D. in economics. In the fall of 1950 he started teaching economics at San Francisco State University.

In the summer of 1950, Tom Lantos married his childhood sweetheart, Annette Tillemann. Their first home was a tiny apartment in San Francisco. After a few years, they were able to purchase a modest home in San Bruno, and later they bought a home in Millbrae, where their two daughters attended public schools and where Tom served for several years as a member of the Millbrae School Board.

For three decades (1950-1980) Tom Lantos was a professor of economics at San Francisco State University, an international affairs analyst for public television, and an economic consultant to businesses. He also served in senior advisory roles to members of the United States Senate.

Tom and Annette Lantos are the parents of two daughters - Annette and Katrina, and they have 17 grandchildren.