If there's one thing our deeply polarized electorate can agree on this election season, it's this: What a shame that someone has to win. Whether it's Mitch McConnell versus Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky or Rick Scott against Charlie Crist in Florida, so many races this cycle are between two candidates who have greater unfavorable than favorable ratings in the polls that, as MSNBC's Benjy Sarlin recently noted, "voters are struggling to decide between politicians that they feel lukewarm about at best and outright contemptuous of at worst."

Unless they happen to live in Massachusetts' 6th Congressional District—a mixture of immigrant suburbs, working-class towns, and wealthy seaside enclaves that stretches from just north of Boston to the New Hampshire border. There, voters face a difficult midterm decision not because they'll be choosing between the lesser of two evils but because they've been blessed with two unusually worthy candidates. Indeed, Massachusetts's North Shore might be one of the few places in the United States today where voters won't walk into—and out of—their polling places holding their noses.

The Republican candidate is Richard Tisei. Although the 6th is Massachusetts's most Republican-leaning Congressional district, President Obama still won it two years ago by 11 points. Which means that Tisei, who served in the Massachusetts legislature for 26 years, is about as moderate a Republican as you're likely to find these days. To wit, while Tisei wants Massachusetts to be exempted from Obamacare, he argues it's because the Commonwealth already had near-universal healthcare coverage when the federal law was passed; unlike pretty much every other GOP candidate, he doesn't call for Obamacare's repeal.

But what really makes Tisei stand out inside the GOP are his stances on social issues. Tisei is pro-choice and supports marriage equality; earlier this year, he boycotted the Massachusetts GOP's state convention over the party platform's opposition to abortion and gay marriage. What's more, Tisei is gay and married himself—facts of his life that, like any hitched hetero pol, he uses in his campaign: In one of his ads, he says chipperly and matter-of-factly: "My husband and I live right on Main Street, next door to my mom." It's hard to imagine any candidate—Republican or Democrat—making such a statement in a campaign ad as recently as two years ago. But, as Tisei explained to The New York Times, "I think people need to know who I am and what I'm all about. I'm obviously proud to be married to Bernie, and I'm proud to be a Republican."

Tisei's equally compelling Democratic opponent is Seth Moulton. A first-time candidate, the 36-year-old Moulton was a senior at Harvard when, four weeks away from graduation in 2001, he decided to enlist in the Marines. He went on to serve four tours in Iraq as an infantry officer and, after leaving the Marines, attended Harvard's Kennedy School on the GI bill; he got a Harvard MBA, too. After passing up lucrative jobs on Wall Street, Moulton decided to challenge the 18-year (and scandal-plagued) incumbent John Tierney in September's Democratic primary, and scored an upset.