For the first time in a decade, there’s an open primary on both sides of the ballot in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District.
Leading up to the state primary on Sept. 10, NHPR is speaking with the top candidates in that race to learn more about where they stand on some of the biggest concerns we’ve heard from voters.
Read on for NHPR Morning Edition host Rick Ganley’s interview with Democrat Maggie Goodlander. Goodlander is a lawyer and has served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice and as a senior advisor for the Biden administration.
What questions do you have for the candidates running for Congress and governor in the 2024 election? What issues do you want them to address while seeking your vote? Share your thoughts here.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Transcript
What would you focus your attention on as a new member of Congress first? What issue do you want to prioritize?
You know, I think when we look around our country today, the most important issues of our time are on the ballot. Freedom is on the ballot, and here we are in the Live Free or Die state. And you know, I have dedicated my life to fighting for freedom, here in New Hampshire, and in all three branches of our government.
I think reproductive freedom is on the ballot. Two years ago, the Supreme Court took us back in time when it overturned Roe v Wade and ripped away reproductive freedom and basic rights for women across this country. This is, for me, at the top of the agenda, because [of] the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs — and I was really proud to be a law clerk to Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote the dissenting opinion in that case. And I think we all remember where we were the day that decision came down. I was at the Justice Department helping to fight back, and it's going to be the fight of our lifetimes.
Specifically, what are you looking to do in a very divided Congress, in fact, to remedy that?
So I think we got to start with protecting basic rights to access abortion. New Hampshire is the only state in New England that has no statutory or constitutional protections for abortion access. We need to protect that at the national level.
And I think we've got common sense and the Constitution on our side in that fight. We've also got to protect the full range of reproductive rights — access to contraception. This is a right that the Supreme Court had for decades recognized. It's now been called into question. So Congress has to step up and protect that right. We also have to protect [the] right to access IVF. And as someone who has gone through IVF myself, these are rights that need to be protected.
And one of the first things we did in this campaign was to issue a reproductive freedom agenda, which is a starting point, and it maps out, really, a roadmap for what we're going to have to do. And it starts with protecting these basic rights that have now been called into question and ripped away by extreme judges and extreme politicians.
I want to look at some other issues while we have you. Many voters we've talked with are concerned about the high cost of living here in New Hampshire. What kind of policies specifically would you propose or support to make the state a more affordable place to live?
You know, everywhere I go, every day on the campaign trail, I hear about the pain that people are feeling here in the district, whether it's at the grocery store where we've seen the cost of eggs skyrocket in recent years, up 126%. Whether it's the cost of renting or buying a home which has gone through the roof, or whether it's the cost of prescription drugs, prices have never been higher, but neither have corporate profits, and wages are not keeping up. And it's not enough for us to say, “get a third job or a fourth job.” Congress has to step up and provide some solutions.
So I spent much of the last three years on the front lines of the fight against one of the drivers of high costs in this country, and that's corporate monopolies who are finding ways to fix the price of rent, using algorithms to jack up the cost of housing. You know, here in New Hampshire, 82%. That's the percent increase in the cost of a single family home over the last six years. And part of the problem here is we see multibillion dollar private equity firms, hedge funds buying up single family homes all across this country and here in New Hampshire, jacking up the cost of housing and—
So what do you do about that?
So having been on the front lines of the fight, our antitrust laws and consumer protection laws, they're rooted in ideas that are as old as America. It's about checking power, in this case corporate power. But these laws haven't been updated in some cases in more than a century. And I've seen how these laws can work in practice. They're powerful tools. I think what's been exciting and energizing for me, having been a part of this anti-monopoly fight, there's bipartisan support for common sense solutions to update these laws that will make a real difference in people's lives here in New Hampshire.
I want to turn to immigration and border policy. It's a top concern with many. What's one specific immigration policy that you could point to that you would want to support?
There are a lot of them. But I'll tell you, you know, 10 years ago, I was a part of a bipartisan effort in the Senate to take a hard look at our immigration laws and at our border security policies. And we came together on a bipartisan basis and passed through the United States Senate, a comprehensive immigration reform bill. And the only reason that today — it might sound like deja vu all over again, in a sense — the only thing standing in between immigration reform and the American people is Donald Trump, who's been a complete impediment to it.
But look, our immigration laws and our immigration system has got to be built around an orderly rule of law system. And what I saw working at the Justice Department — which the Department of Justice oversees our immigration courts — it's an underfunded system with outdated laws. We've got to get the resources that are needed to do justice to this system into our immigration courts. That's one very important piece of business, which is separate but related to the border security challenges.
And on border security, if I could, the technology at our border that is designed to detect deadly drugs that are crossing official ports of entry every day and leading to overdose deaths in New Hampshire, this technology is in desperate need of an upgrade. And this bill that President Biden was prepared to sign, it was crafted by Republicans.
You'd like to see that bill brought back?
It's not a perfect bill, but it includes many, many important items. And so, you know, one of the things I learned, though, in working on comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform is that “comprehensive” can sometimes be the enemy of progress. So in Congress, I want to be a part on day one of the fight to find ways to advance the reforms we can and not allow “comprehensive” to be the enemy of important progress that we've got to make.
You know, we're seeing these dangerous flooding events in many rural areas here in New Hampshire and in fact, many cities as well. It's putting financial strains on towns and cities. How will you support those communities as extreme weather events and flooding become more common?
Federal funds have got to be flowing into the communities here in New Hampshire for whom they were intended. As a member of Congress, I'm going to fight to make sure that we get the resources we need here in New Hampshire. But, you know, we're seeing these flood events. It's biblical times, and part of the driver of all this, of course, is the climate crisis. And so I want to be a leader on this on day one. We have a lot of work to do. The Department of Defense has been saying for the last 10 years that climate change is a national security threat. It's a threat to all of our communities.
And I want to be a part of making the United States of America a clean energy superpower of the world. It's going to create jobs. It's going to help our communities. It's going to lower costs. But we've got to address the climate crisis at its core, and I hope that we'll be able to look back two years from now and see that the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law, all these important pieces of legislation that have been signed into law during the Biden-Harris administration were initial small steps towards a clean energy future and a protected planet that's going to help us prevent the damage that we're seeing every day in our communities.
