Tom Petri  Thomas Evert Petri (born May 28, 1940) is an American politician who was the U.S. representative for from 1979 to 2015; he is a member of the Republican Party. Petri was born in Marinette, Wisconsin. When he was a toddler, his father, a Navy flyer and lieutenant during World War II, was lost during a mission over the Atlantic. Petri, his infant brother, and his widowed mother moved to Fond du Lac, where Petri's mother taught in the Fond du Lac public schools. He represented his high school as a delegate to the youth government and leadership program Badger Boys State in 1957. He graduated from Goodrich High School in Fond du Lac. Petri then attended Harvard University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees. He was one of the founders of the Ripon Society, a public policy organization aligned with the Republican Party. He served as a volunteer with the Peace Corps in Somalia from 1966-1967. From 1969 to 1970 he served as a White House aide during the Presidency of Richard Nixon. Petri served in the Wisconsin State Senate from 1973 to 1979. Petri ran for the U.S. Senate in 1974. He won the Republican primary with 85% of the vote. During the campaign, Petri walked across the state of Wisconsin as part of his grassroots strategy. In the general election, incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson defeated Petri 62%–36%. Petri took five of 72 counties in the state. In 1979, he won a special election to finish the term of the late U.S. Congressman William A. Steiger, who had died shortly after being re-elected in 1978. He defeated fellow state senator Gary Goyke by only 1,200 voters. He won the seat in his own right in 1980, taking 57 percent of the vote in a rematch with Goyke. Petri and was reelected 16 times. The only time he faced a race anywhere near as close as his 1979 contest came in 1992. That year, he defeated State Representative Peg Lautenschlager 53% to 47%. It would be the only reelection contest in which he won less than 65 percent of the vote. He won ten of the district's thirteen counties. He lost Manitowoc, Brown, and Outagamie counties. He ran unopposed in 1990, 1994, 2002, and 2006. He faced no major-party opposition in 1986 and 1998.