Peter Lien is a member of the House of Representatives who represents Texas's 22nd congressional district. He is the son of refugees who arrived in the United States in 1974, and according to Lien, his parents imagined he would one day be addressed as "congressman." His family fishes in Galveston Bay.
In 2002 he is thirty-four years old. He has been a congressman for two months and was elected in a special election following the death of his predecessor Jim Coor. He is invited to the White House to meet with President Bartlet and have his photograph taken with him.[1]
Sam Seaborn later says the representative of the Texas 22nd is a Republican, and the Democrats have so little hope of defeating him that his opponent in the 2002 Election is an electrical engineer who paid his filing fee by dumping the cash out of a cigar box.[2]