Maggie Tamposi Goodlander gave start to her stillborn son in a resort bathtub on Easter.
Her fetus had been identified with a deadly situation and had died in her womb. Medical doctors beneficial a two-day process to take away him, with an in a single day keep at a resort close to the hospital. If she went into labor, they feared, she may hemorrhage.
However getting an appointment took weeks. The process that Ms. Goodlander wanted can also be generally used for abortions later in being pregnant. Medical doctors throughout the northeast have been flooded with sufferers touring north from states the place abortion had been banned after the autumn of Roe v. Wade.
Her surgical procedure got here only a day too late: Ms. Goodlander, 37, delivered the child in 2023 at a resort close to the hospital, counting on her expertise taking a hypnobirthing course on YouTube. The harrowing expertise, she stated, uncovered her in a deeply private approach to the brand new actuality of a post-Roe America and impressed her politically, serving to gasoline a need to run for a Home seat in her native New Hampshire to assist combat for abortion rights.
However there was one other outstanding ingredient to her expertise. The nationwide safety adviser to the president, Jake Sullivan, was there, too — in his unofficial capability, as her husband.
As she enters the race for New Hampshire’s second district, Ms. Goodlander comes armed with a robust story, an impeccable résumé and deep connections in Washington and New Hampshire. But as she campaigns throughout western New Hampshire, she should navigate a private panorama with little precedent.
There are solely a handful of examples of the partner of a high-ranking official operating for federal workplace, and none when that official has been on the middle of one of the vital divisive points in international and home politics — the warfare in Gaza.
Ms. Goodlander, who’s a decade youthful than her husband, says the couple is used to navigating dueling skilled obligations. The 2 met at a safety convention in Munich in the course of the Obama administration, when she was working for then-Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and he was working for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the State Division.
Greater than a dozen years later, they’re one of the vital well-connected Democratic {couples} in authorities. Whereas Mr. Sullivan served as a overseas coverage adviser in two administrations, Ms. Goodlander labored as a White Home adviser, a deputy assistant lawyer normal on the Justice Division, a overseas coverage adviser within the Senate and an intelligence officer within the Navy Reserve.
Former President Invoice Clinton and Mrs. Clinton attended their 2015 wedding ceremony in New Haven, Conn., the place Mrs. Clinton delivered a studying. (Mrs. Clinton match the looks in between East Coast fund-raisers for her presidential marketing campaign.) Mr. Sullivan’s sister, brother and sister-in-law all work for the Biden administration.
Extra lately, Ms. Goodlander talked about operating for workplace with a number of outstanding Democratic lawmakers and with former President Barack Obama. A few of these non-public discussions have been initiated by Mr. Sullivan, who requested the officers if they might be prepared to supply recommendation to his spouse, based on three individuals accustomed to the conversations.
These sorts of interactions are authorized, specialists stated, so long as they’re taking place in Mr. Sullivan’s private capability, to keep away from violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal workers from partaking in political actions whereas they’re working.
“Nothing modifications as a result of his partner occurs to be operating for federal workplace,” stated Donald Sherman, the chief counsel for Residents for Duty and Ethics in Washington, a non- revenue watchdog group. “His spouse operating for workplace is the type of factor that makes the information however doesn’t change the authorized obligations.”
Ms. Goodlander says her marketing campaign will function with the “highest moral requirements per the legislation.” The couple met repeatedly with attorneys on the White Home and the Nationwide Safety Council to get detailed steerage on the Hatch Act earlier than Ms. Goodlander started her marketing campaign. She flatly rejected the suggestion {that a} donor to her marketing campaign could possibly be in search of to affect her husband — and the overseas coverage of the administration.
“I’ve had my very own profession and I’ll proceed to have my very own profession,” she stated. “I can’t be purchased and neither can Jake.”
However the optics of these strains will be tough: Mr. Sullivan can, for instance, attend a fund-raiser for his spouse however is barred from asking for donations. He can put on a T-shirt supporting her marketing campaign however not on the White Home, his office. He can put a bumper sticker on his automobile — so long as the automobile isn’t used for his official duties.
Mr. Sullivan can also be immersed in a difficulty that has infected the Democratic base and brought over the marketing campaign path, as candidates throughout the nation discover themselves disrupted by protesters objecting to the administration’s help for Israel. When requested, Ms. Goodlander declined to supply any criticism of the Biden administration’s response to the warfare, saying she was “actually proud” of her husband.
To this point, Mr. Sullivan has remained a virtually invisible presence in Ms. Goodlander’s nascent marketing campaign, solely briefly showing, smiling broadly at his spouse, in a nonetheless shot included in her kickoff video. Final weekend, as Mr. Sullivan flew to the Center East for talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Ms. Goodlander mingled with voters on the St. Philip Greek Meals Pageant in Nashua and addressed an awards dinner hosted by the New Hampshire Younger Democrats.
However their life in Washington has raised different questions, as properly. In 2018, the couple purchased a home in Portsmouth, N.H., a scenic seaside city positioned within the state’s different congressional district, and Ms. Goodlander started educating legislation on the College of New Hampshire and Dartmouth School. After Mr. Biden received the White Home, she returned to Washington to work within the Justice Division as a high official within the antitrust division.
Shortly earlier than asserting her bid earlier this month, Ms. Goodlander rented a home in Nashua, N.H., the largest metropolis within the district she hopes to symbolize in Congress and the place she was raised. Voting information present that she final forged a poll within the district in 2008, when she was an undergraduate at Yale College and voted absentee.
Ms. Goodlander dismisses considerations about her residency by citing her deep household roots within the state. Her grandfather Samuel A. Tamposi was the state’s largest industrial actual property developer, a restricted companion within the Boston Pink Sox and a serious Republican donor. Her mom, Betty Tamposi, served as a Republican legislator within the New Hampshire statehouse and ran for a similar seat that Ms. Goodlander is attempting to win. Throughout that race, in 1988, Ms. Tamposi was criticized by Senator Gordon Humphrey, a New Hampshire Republican, for putting “political ambition forward of the welfare of an toddler,” a remark that referenced a younger Ms. Goodlander.
“From my front room you possibly can see the hospital the place I used to be born and the shoe manufacturing unit the place my great-grandfather labored,” Ms. Goodlander stated. “My household’s been right here for over 100 years, so this has at all times been our dwelling. I left dwelling to serve my nation and I’m coming again dwelling to do the identical.”
However Ms. Goodlander will face two Democratic opponents within the Sept. 10 main with far newer involvement in New Hampshire politics — each of whom are operating, like she is, with a heavy give attention to preventing for abortion rights. One in every of them, State Senator Becky Whitley, a two-term legislator, was born within the district and returned to the state after legislation faculty to work as an environmental and incapacity rights lawyer.
Her different opponent, Colin Van Ostern, is a well-established political operator within the state who served two phrases on the New Hampshire Government Council and mounted a dropping bid for governor in 2016. A California native, Mr. Van Ostern moved to New Hampshire in 2001 to work on Senator Jeanne Shaheen’s first Senate marketing campaign and stayed. He’s been endorsed by Consultant Ann McLane Kuster, the retiring Democratic lawmaker who holds the seat, in addition to greater than 300 different native officers and activists.
“Let me say it this fashion,” Mr. Van Ostern stated, when requested about Ms. Goodlander’s residency. “I’d not commerce my grass roots help and a observe file of actual outcomes for the individuals of this district over 20 years for something. Not for any amount of cash, for any quantity of highly effective connections.”
Some longtime New Hampshire political organizers doubt that Ms. Goodlander’s time in Washington will probably be a serious problem for voters within the state.
“Her grandfather nearly constructed Nashua — despite the fact that he’s a Republican, he did a number of good issues for New Hampshire,” stated William Shaheen, a longtime New Hampshire Democratic activist who’s married to the state’s senior senator, Ms. Shaheen. “She’s a New Hampshire woman.”
