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While attending Trenton Stale College in the early '60s, he decided on a career in politics after being elected senior class president. He also married a classmate, Maryanne Spaeth, and started a family (Christopher, now 32, Gregory, 30, and Catherine, 28), later graduating from Rutgers University Law School and then entering the mucky waters of New Jersey polities. Florio didn't care for some of the local pols he had to deal with—he once said many of them belonged "on a post office wall"—but he was savvy enough to rise to a U.S. Congressional seat in 1974 as part of the post-Watergate class of new-broom Democrats.

Florio quickly established his reputation as a committed populist. "He was great at making government relate to people, getting them through the government maze," says Bryant. "His belief that government ought to touch people endeared him to a lot of his constituents. They called him the Cong"—as in Congressman. It was all part of what Florio calls "seeing that the underdog gets a little bit of a fair shake." But the personal toll was severe. Living alone for years in a one-room apartment over a liquor store in a shabby Capitol Hill neighborhood, Florio would go home to his Camden, N.J., district with a suitcase of dirty laundry for hurried weekends with his family. Eventually he worked himself out of a marriage: He and his wife were legally separated in 1981 and divorced in 1984.

In 1981 he ran for governor, losing to Republican Tom Kean by an eyelash—1,797 votes statewide. By that time, even Florio realized he was punishing himself too much. "I looked like an emaciated cadaver," he says. "That's when I learned you've got to pace yourself."

From wiki.