In the early years when I came to know Peter Nystrom, a fellow Norwich guy who, like me, was enrolled at Eastern Connecticut State College in Willimantic, he didn’t strike me as the type who would go into politics after he graduated from college.

At Eastern, which has since grown into Eastern Connecticut State University, he was a studious, well-liked, fun-loving guy who ran track and cross country. The track and cross country athletes were a close-knit, quirky group who received far less attention for their efforts than Eastern’s powerhouse baseball program and popular basketball, softball, and soccer teams.

That seemed OK with them. They happily went about their competitive business and remain close to one another to this day.

Shortly after graduating from Eastern, however, Nystrom ran successfully as a Republican for the Norwich City Council. Well, I thought, good for him. He’s a Norwich guy and he’ll work hard, but eventually, he’ll probably tire of it and move on to something else.

A few years later, when I heard that Nystrom was challenging popular nine-term incumbent state Rep. Thomas Sweeney, D-Norwich, for his seat in the state legislature, I thought he’d get trounced in the general election. However, the year was 1984, and the national Republican ticket was led by Ronald Reagan, who defeated Democrat Walter Mondale in one of the most lopsided presidential landslides in history.

Reagan’s immense popularity, particularly against a weak Democratic opponent, reverberated all the way down to state races.

Nystrom, tirelessly going door-to-door throughout Norwich’s 46th District, unseated Sweeney, who came into the race with an impressive record of accomplishment during his 18 years in Hartford, and was enormously popular both in Norwich and Hartford.

Sweeney, who passed away in 2007, was not the only casualty of the Reagan landslide. Another longtime incumbent state representative, Leo Flynn, D-Norwich, was unseated after seven terms in Hartford by Republican Peter V. Cuprak.

Eric Benson, a fellow I’d known from our high school days together at Norwich Free Academy, pulled off the most shocking upset in Connecticut that year when he defeated Sen. James J. Murphy, D-Franklin, the powerful and popular President Pro Tempore of the Connecticut State Senate.

Benson, a political neophyte, was seen by many as merely a sacrificial candidate who filled a vacant slot on the Republican ticket against Murphy, a seven-term incumbent.

Those were but a few of the many upsets throughout Connecticut and the rest of the country as GOP candidates riding Reagan’s coattails and the party lever took over Congress and many state legislatures throughout the country.

In Connecticut, Republicans had wrested control of both the House and Senate. Their majorities would be short-lived, however. Two years later, with popular Democratic Gov. William A. O’Neill and U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd at the top of the ticket, Democrats regained control of the legislature and have held it since in this Democratic state.

Historically, southeastern Connecticut has been a reliable stronghold for the Democratic Party. That’s especially true in both Norwich and New London, where Democrats hold large voter pluralities. Having grown up in a Democratic household in Norwich, I was aware that the most competitive races for public office in and around our city took place in Democratic caucuses, conventions, and primaries. The eventual Democratic nominee was virtually certain to win the general elections in November, whether it was for state or municipal office.

Over the years, though, the hard-working Nystrom has been a conspicuous anomaly. Unlike Benson, Cuprak and many other one-term wonders who were elected to the legislature in the Reagan landslide, Nystrom won re-election in 1986, despite the Democrats having O’Neill and Dodd at the top of their ticket and winning back majorities in both the House and Senate. He served seven more two-year terms in the state House of Representatives before returning eventually to municipal politics.

From 1990 to 1996, I worked in Hartford as a legislative lobbyist for the firm of Rome, Frankel & Kennelly. The principals in the firm were Lewis B. Rome, former state Senate Majority Leader and the Republican nominee for governor in 1982; Robert F. Frankel, a Democrat and former House majority leader; and James J. Kennelly, also a Democrat and two-term speaker of the House.

We had about two dozen clients that I was very proud to represent, ranging from Pfizer and US Surgical to the Mohegan Tribe and the Motion Picture Association of America.

Our firm’s relationship with Nystrom was cordial. While representing Norwich in the legislature, he was also working as a driver for UPS. He was often seen in his UPS uniform at the Legislative Office Building, and to this day I don’t know when he slept or how he was able to effectively juggle both very disparate jobs.

He was thoughtful, inquisitive, engaged and usually agreeable when we sought his support for our clients, especially local ones like Pfizer and the Mohegan Tribe, where some of his constituents worked.

One exception was with Wheelabrator Technologies, the owner/operator of a planned trash-to-energy plant in neighboring Lisbon. Even though the plant had received all necessary state and local permits and had been approved twice by voters in Lisbon, Nystrom and many other state politicians were vehemently opposed to the plant. They argued that it would pollute the environment, drive up already-high trash disposal costs for the region, and would have to sustain itself with out-of-state trash during the recession at that time.

We argued against those claims — successfully as it turned out in the state Senate. Bills that would have blocked the plant passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly in three consecutive years in the 1990s, but they all died in the Senate, allowing the plant to be built and begin operations in 1995.

I’d never seen Peter so angry, but it wasn’t personal; he was doing what he thought was best for his constituents. Today, the plant runs cleanly and efficiently, and Peter and I got past our differences on that issue.

In 2001, following a trend in many American cities, Norwich returned to a strong-mayor form of government, and in 2007 after a seven-year hiatus from politics, Nystrom ran his usual vigorous campaign city-wide and was elected to a four-year term. He was defeated in his bid for re-election by Democrat Deb Hinchey, the first woman to serve as Norwich’s mayor.

However, Nystrom won the seat back in 2017 after Hinchey didn’t seek re-election. Earlier this month, at age 64, he announced his candidacy for a final, four-year term. To date, there are no other announced candidates, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be.

Politics is part of Norwich’s lifeblood, and it will be surprising if we don’t see yet another spirited race for the mayor’s seat.

In the meantime, however, I’m impressed with Nystrom’s very successful political and governmental career, one I hadn’t expected when we were buddies back in our college days together. I am proud of what he has accomplished for my native city and even prouder to call him my friend.