The Democratic primary in the state’s 2nd Congressional District features two well-funded candidates — Colin Van Ostern and Maggie Goodlander — who largely agree on the issues. That’s one reason why the race has centered, for the most part, on the candidates’ biographies and competing resumes.
NHPR’s senior political reporter Josh Rogers joined Morning Edition’s Jackie Harris to discuss some of what the candidates are choosing to emphasize and de-emphasize about their careers as they campaign.
Transcript
Jackie Harris: A good deal of Maggie Goodlander's candidacy is based on her national experience, including in the White House, advising on the Trump impeachment and work at the U.S. Department of Justice. But she is also talking up her legal work in New Hampshire, right?
Josh Rogers: She is, she does mention it a lot: Her year of teaching law at UNH, a summer teaching at Dartmouth. But there's also another thing she regularly emphasizes, and that's her work in New Hampshire courts. Let's take a listen.
Maggie Goodlander: “I became a lawyer by training here in New Hampshire. But I really became an advocate in my heart here, and I have had the honor of representing people in this state in the most vulnerable and consequential moments of their life in New Hampshire family courts.”
Harris: Okay. Goodlander says she became a lawyer by training here, representing people in family courts here in New Hampshire. Is that accurate?
Rogers: Well, Maggie Goodlander did take the bar exam here, but as for her experience in family courts, it turns out that's quite minimal. Basically a single case, the first case she ever worked as a lawyer. Apparently it was a custody matter in Laconia family court. She told me she picked it up on a pro bono basis when she practiced out of the Boston office of Skadden Arps, a major international law firm, where she worked for a total of 11 months.
Here's what Goodlander told me when I asked her whether she was overselling this part of her legal background:
“Maggie Goodlander: This work mattered to me.
Josh Rogers: But we're talking about a single case in New Hampshire family court, just to be clear.
Goodlander: As a solo, like, by myself. Yeah, it was my very first case.
Rogers: And that's the only one?
Goodlander: Um, well, I worked on two, like I said, I mean, in New Hampshire court as an appearance — yes, it was my — that was the case, in my first case, that I worked on.”
Harris: Okay. So Goodlander’s New Hampshire courtroom experience doesn't add up to much. Why does that even matter?
Rogers: Well, you know, the fate of her campaign certainly doesn't hinge on the depth of her work in New Hampshire courts. But the work is something I've heard her mention repeatedly on the campaign trail. And she and people surrounding her cite that work to rebut arguments that, despite being born and raised in Nashua, she's chosen to spend her adult life mainly working in D.C.
This week, for instance, prominent supporters of hers are circulating a letter that highlights Goodlander’s work, “representing vulnerable Granite Staters in family court and drug court,” and it urges voters to “get all the facts.” The facts are that Maggie Goodlander handled one family court case in New Hampshire and never represented anyone in drug court here.
Harris: Let's turn to the other Democratic candidate in this race: Colin Van Ostern. His campaign is marked by something he rarely mentions. That is his most recent job, where he worked for more than three years as a top executive at Alumni Ventures, a Manchester-based venture capital firm.
Rogers: That's right. If you catch Colin Van Ostern campaigning, you hear plenty about votes he took as an executive councilor a decade ago, or the local volunteer work he's done, or past work at Stonyfield Yogurt or at Southern New Hampshire University. You don't hear much about Alumni Ventures, the venture cap firm he helped lead. And if you do hear anything at all, it's glancing. Let's listen to an example from a campaign ad.
“Advertisement: Even in business, he helped grow women's health care startups, to increase family planning and abortion access.
Van Ostern: I'm Colin Van Ostern. Now, with the stakes higher than ever for our country….”
Rogers: So what this refers to is Alumni Ventures’ investment in Hey Jane, a company that provides medication abortion services and gynecological health care. Van Ostern says he helped “source” that investment for Alumni Ventures, and Alumni Ventures has been successful. Overall, it's raised more than $1.2 billion, relying on a business model that leverages networks of college alumni with a focus on graduates of mostly elite schools to raise its capital. Van Ostern ended up the company's president and chief operating officer before he left in preparation to run for Congress.
Harris: So why is this not something Van Ostern talks about much?
Rogers: Well, he would dispute that's the case. But his venture capital work — work that really appears to have given him the wherewithal to mount this congressional bid without taking another job — gets almost no emphasis as he campaigns, despite the fact that this was his most recent employer.
You know, obviously invoking high dollar investment work with elite clients isn't necessarily a road to success when you're running in a Democratic primary. But there's also the fact that Alumni Ventures has run into significant issues with regulators. In 2022, when Van Ostern was the firm's president, the company settled cases with the SEC, paying a $700,000 penalty and repaying investors $4.7 million. The company also paid out $600,000 to regulators here in New Hampshire, and another $700,000 to regulators in Massachusetts, all over misleading investors and improperly moving money between accounts.
The conduct in question did start before Van Ostern began working at alumni ventures. But the period of noncompliance that regulators cite extended into his time there. Here's how he explains that.
Van Ostern: “Um, well, I learned about it after I took the job and the company already had been working with and cooperating with regulators at that point for some time, and was well on the way to fixing those things. And I think it was really important for a company that, you know, had had kind of sometimes messy early start up years that they were professionalizing.”
Harris: Josh, why does this kind of scrutiny into these candidates’ resumes matter?
Rogers: Well, in a race that's boiled down to candidates’ efforts to demonstrate their connection to, you know, everyday life here in New Hampshire, it makes some sense for Maggie Goodlander to emphasize her work, however slight it's been, in New Hampshire courtrooms. And for Colin Van Ostern, it makes sense that he'd be far more inclined to want to talk about past votes to fix a bridge in Cheshire County or coach youth sports than his work for a company that had to settle regulatory violations with the SEC and authorities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
