Of the candidates who won major party primaries Tuesday, Democrat Maggie Goodlander stands out.
For one, Goodlander was the only candidate to win a statewide or federal race whose name had never previously appeared on a New Hampshire ballot. In winning the 2nd Congressional District primary, Goodlander defeated an experienced opponent with deep ties to the local party establishment and who enjoyed the support of the outgoing incumbent. And she did so by a landslide margin of nearly 30 points.
Goodlander now faces Republican Lily Tang Williams in the general election. The 2nd District's slant gives Goodlander strong odds of winning in November. But her victory this week has already impressed political observers across party lines.
Here’s how Goodlander put that primary win together.
DC connections
Goodlander’s ties to the upper reaches of power in Washington were both a calling card throughout her campaign — and a potential hurdle.
Her resume included numerous jobs in DC, including work on the Trump impeachment, time as a staffer for two US senators, a Supreme Court clerkship, and stints in the Biden Justice Department and White House, where her husband, Jake Sullivan, serves as the president's National Security Adviser.
For some of her prominent backers, Goodlander’s elite resume took on an almost talismanic power: “The only way Maggie could build a AAA resume . . . was to live where those opportunities are available,” former state Sen. Martha Fuller Clark wrote in an open letter to Democrats.
Throughout this race, her opponent Colin Van Ostern — whose work in local Democratic politics stretches back more than 20 years — tried to tar Goodlander as a candidate made of, for, and by DC.
“I’m in this race to fix Washington, not defend it,” Van Ostern argued during one debate.
But Goodlander’s use of her Washington ties, which according to the New York Times included meeting with former President Barack Obama to discuss running for Congress, appear to have all been to the good. For example, Goodlander’s national profile among elite Democrats helped her outraise and outspend Van Ostern.
“All Democrats come to New York to raise money,” Whitney Tilson, a Manhattan investment advisor and prolific party donor, noted during a lawn party he hosted for Goodlander at his Lake Sunapee house last month. “It’s very rare to encounter someone as extraordinary as Maggie.”
Goodlander also got a boost from deep-pocketed advocacy groups, including EMILY’S List and VoteVets, which spent more than $1 million on her behalf, including multiple rounds of direct mail to New Hampshire voters and a TV ad that derided Van Ostern as a “perennial candidate” who led a business that was sanctioned by the SEC.
Local outreach
Goodlander also maximized the political value of the relatively short time she has spent in New Hampshire as an adult.
Since buying a house in Portsmouth in 2018, Goodlander has taught at the UNH law school and Dartmouth and found her way onto the boards of several prominent local non-profits, including the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation and New Hampshire Legal Assistance.
She also made the rounds with influential leaders in New Hampshire political and legal circles — long before she made an official run for office. Some of those people would later prove useful in vouching for her candidacy. Former New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice John Broderick, for instance, recalled how Goodlander invited him to breakfast five years ago, to discuss his mental health advocacy work. He would go on to become a prominent supporter shortly after she announced her candidacy this spring.
Connections like that allowed Goodlander to repeatedly claim on the campaign trail that “New Hampshire is the place I became an advocate in my heart.” But her work here as a practicing lawyer was minimal — almost non-existent, in fact. Still, this array of affiliations and experiences — however limited — helped her to blunt the criticism that, despite being born and raised in Nashua, her recent connection to the 2nd District is thin.
Family attention
Another way Goodlander worked to cement her ties to the 2nd District was to stress family connections to Nashua going back four generations.
Goodlander’s grandfather Sam Tamposi was at one point the state’s largest developer. His wealth is the reason why — according to her financial disclosures — Goodlander could be worth more than $30 million.
Goodlander introduced herself as “Maggie Tamposi Goodlander” in her campaign's kickoff ad. That isn't her birth name — or a name she’s previously used professionally. As Goodlander’s campaign picked up steam, her use of the Tamposi name faded. But Goodlander’s mother, Betty Tamposi, a former state lawmaker who ran in the same congressional district as a Republican in 1988, remained conspicuous at Goodlander's side on the campaign trail.
Betty Tamposi played many roles in her daughter’s primary campaign — driving her to events, appearing in TV ads. She also filled more critical behind-the-scenes needs: putting the arm on donors, for instance, or working to deliver endorsements from local politicos.
Tamposi also had ties to one particularly critical endorsement that came late in the campaign. Two decades ago, she co-led “Republicans for Lynch,” a group of prominent GOP leaders who endorsed then-candidate John Lynch in his campaign for governor against the Republican incumbent, Gov. Craig Benson.
Lynch won that race, and soon after taking office, he named Tamposi to the Board of Trustees of the University System of New Hampshire. Lynch went on to serve four terms as a widely-popular governor. Early in this Democratic primary, he endorsed Van Ostern. But he withdrew that support late in the race and came out as an enthusiastic and vocal backer of Goodlander, deriding Van Ostern for running a “nasty” campaign.
It’s unclear if Tamposi had any hand in prompting Lynch to flip his support — Goodlander had already been endorsed by Lynch’s wife and daughter — but her past ties to Lynch certainly gave her daughter a helpful inroad. And while endorsements rarely matter much in New Hampshire politics these days, Lynch’s public repudiation of Van Ostern — two weeks before primary day — helped put this race away.
Capitalizing on errors
Goodlander also benefited from Van Ostern mistakes. A big one was his decision to criticize her commitment to abortion rights in a TV ad in which Kuster highlighted Goodlander’s past political donations, asserting that "she gave thousands to pro-life Republicans.”
Goodlander did donate the money — to a Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump, and to a former law school classmate vying in a primary against a far-right opponent. But while the criticism from the Van Ostern camp was factually accurate, it enraged many Democrats. Some saw it as offensive, given Goodlander’s frequent recounting of her experience delivering her own stillborn baby in a hotel bathtub because of delayed access to care.
Lynch, for instance, referenced the abortion ad in his decision to abandon Van Ostern.
And for Van Ostern, who based his whole campaign on the idea that he possessed a deep, sincere connection to life in New Hampshire, having the most popular Democrat in modern state history denounce him as “nasty” made that a far harder sell.
It's clear that in choosing Goodlander as their nominee, 2nd District Democrats have voted for someone much different that they typically do: A candidate with a track record generated largely outside of New Hampshire. For many Goodlander supporters, that's not a problem.
“I think the people of New Hampshire are able to see the national importance of this race,” former 2nd District Congressman Paul Hodes observed at Goodlander's victory party Tuesday evening. “Maggie’s victory shows that the people of New Hampshire are not as parochial as they are made out to be.”
That may or may not be true. But what is certain is that Goodlander is close to reaching the highest levels of state politics, while managing to skip many of the steps her predecessors took to get there.
