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Goodlander and Williams to face off in 2nd Congressional District

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Goodlander and Williams to face off in 2nd Congressional District

Sep 10, 2024 | 10:59 pm ET
By Claire Sullivan
Goodlander and Tang Williams to face off in 2nd Congressional District
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Maggie Goodlander files her candidacy in the 2nd Congressional District on June 12, 2024. (Annmarie Timmins | New Hampshire Bulletin) 2024 Elections

Maggie Goodlander, a former Biden administration official, rode her national political connections to victory Tuesday in a bitter battle for the Democratic nomination in the 2nd Congressional District.

Goodlander will face Republican Lily Tang Williams, a rental property manager, in the first open race for the 2nd District seat in more than a decade.

Goodlander prevailed over former Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern, who was endorsed by incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, who has held the seat since 2013 and did not seek a seventh term. The candidates attacked each other sharply in the weeks leading up to the primary, sparring more over background than policy.

Though animosity had marked the Democratic race in the 2nd District, it faded as the results rolled in. Goodlander told her supporters that both Kuster and Van Ostern had congratulated her and pledged to help her win in November. 

Kuster, who had criticized Goodlander while campaigning for Van Ostern, suggested the testy primary could prove helpful.

“When I first ran for Congress, I emerged from a spirited primary and it made me a stronger candidate and helped prepare me to win and hold this seat,” she said in a statement. “I know the same will be true for Maggie.”

Speaking to her supporters, Goodlander looked ahead.

“The election doesn’t end tonight,” Goodlander said. She didn’t yet know who her opponent would be when she made her victory speech, but she expected that, regardless, they would have stark differences in their visions and urged her supporters to keep fighting. 

Goodlander boasted experience in all three branches of the federal government – most recently as a Department of Justice official and a senior White House adviser – and made the case to voters that her D.C. connections would help her be effective in Congress. She said she will take on “bullies,” which she listed as big corporations, right-wing judges, and extreme politicians.

She has worked for well-known political figures: Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain; Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman; Merrick Garland, then chief judge of the D.C. circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals; and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Her husband, Jake Sullivan, is Biden’s national security adviser. 

In her run for Congress, Goodlander has had the backing of the national party establishment. She was endorsed by Hillary Clinton – who also gave a reading at her wedding – and had a million-dollar fundraising edge over Van Ostern. 

At the center of her pitch, too, was her gender. She argued that the state has a tradition of sending women to Congress; three out of four of the state’s all-Democratic congresspeople are women. 

That argument may have been especially salient in a race where both candidates spoke frequently about abortion rights. Goodlander said that on the day Roe v. Wade was overturned – and, with it, long-standing abortion protections – she was at the Department of Justice “fighting back.” She has also highlighted her recent personal experience of losing her son at 20 weeks pregnant. “For this guy, it’s just politics,” she said in a video about Van Ostern. “But for so many of us, it’s personal.”

Van Ostern had questioned Goodlander’s commitment to abortion rights, including in an ad with Kuster. The incumbent helped him mount another central attack: That Goodlander had spent decades living outside the district, made up of the western chunk of the state, and that her campaign was boosted by out-of-state cash. 

Goodlander rented a home in Nashua around the time of her candidacy. She said more renters should be in Congress, a statement that received backlash because of her $1.2 million home in Portsmouth in the 1st District, multiple media outlets reported. 

In contrast, Van Ostern played up his statewide connections, including two terms on the Executive Council. He managed Kuster’s 2010 run for Congress, which she narrowly lost, and mounted an unsuccessful bid for governor as the Democratic nominee in 2016. He previously worked at Southern New Hampshire University, Stonyfield Yogurt, and more recently as president and chief operating officer of Alumni Ventures, a venture capital company.

Former Gov. John Lynch withdrew his endorsement of Van Ostern in August and threw his support behind Goodlander instead. “I think his campaign is one of the nastiest I’ve seen in my 50 years of being involved in elections here in New Hampshire,” Lynch told WMUR. “I’m appalled by it, and my family are very upset about it as well.”

Goodlander has pointed to her deep family roots in Nashua, where she was born and raised. In a video launching her campaign, she visited the polling place where her mother cast a ballot before giving birth to her on Election Day in 1986. Goodlander, with a Yale law degree, has also taught constitutional law in the state at University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth. 

Goodlander and Williams to face off in 2nd Congressional District
Left to right, Republican 2nd Congressional District candidates Bill Hamlen, Lily Tang Williams, and Vikram Mansharamani face off in a debate on Sept. 4, 2024, at New England College ahead of the Sept. 10 state primary. (Ethan DeWitt | New Hampshire Bulletin)

In a crowded field of Republican competitors, Williams captured 34 percent of the vote with 56 percent of votes counted. The Associated Press called the race at 10:28 p.m. The next top vote-getter was Vikram Mansharamani, with 27 percent, followed by Bill Hamlen, with 17 percent.

Williams emigrated to the United States from China in 1988 for graduate school. “I grew up under Mao’s cultural revolution in China and fled communism for the freedom of the United States,” she said on her campaign website. “Now, I fear the country I love is becoming the country I left.”

She highlights a number of issues on her website: getting “special interests, corporations, and the Federal government out of managing the economy,” upholding the First and Second Amendments, securing the border, and eliminating the federal Department of Education.

In the 1st Congressional District, Democratic U.S. Rep Chris Pappas coasted to renomination. He will face former Executive Councilor Russell Prescott.