Maggie Goodlander, the wife of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and former aide to President Joe Biden, shared the heartbreaking story of losing her son as she announced she is running for Congress.
“My husband Jake and I have been trying to start a family. But when I was almost 20 weeks pregnant, we found out we had lost our son,” she says in her announcement video.
“I went into labor and I delivered my baby myself,” she added. “He died at Easter.”
Maggie Goodlander is married to Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser; she also served in the Biden White House
Goodlander, 37, has left her job as a top adviser to President Biden and moved to Nashua, N.H., to run her political campaign.
She is one of several Democrats vying to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster. The New Hampshire House seat is one of the most competitive races in the country this year and the winner could help decide which party controls Congress.
Goodlander said her experience made the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which overturned Roe v. Wade — “very, very real to me.”
“I want to fight for those freedoms every day, for as long as I can,” she says.
Abortion rights have proven to be an important issue for Democrats campaigning. The party did better than expected in the 2022 midterm elections due to high turnout among women angry about the Supreme Court’s decision.
Biden is also using the issue to rally voters as he campaigns for re-election.
Given Goodlander and Sullivan’s ties to national Democrats and the competitive nature of the seat, the race is likely to draw national attention.
But the Democratic primaries are competitive. Colin Van Ostern, former gubernatorial candidate and former campaign manager of Kuster, announced that he is running for the seat. Senator Becky Whitley is also running.
Kuster has endorsed Van Ostern. Agents around the state are expected to ask questions about how long Goodlander has lived and voted in New Hampshire.
Maggie Goodlander is among the Democrats vying to replace Rep. Annie Kuster
Maggie Goodland and Jake Sullivan with President Joe Biden
Maggie Goodlander, a Navy reservist, worked for Senators Joe Lieberman (right) and John McCain (left)
Goodlander and Sullivan own a $2.2 million home in a tony neighborhood in Portsmouth, NH. It has been their primary residence since 2018, although they have a home in Washington DC due to their jobs.
It is also in the state’s other congressional district.
Goodlander, a native of Nashua, rents a house there while she campaigns for Congress.
She and Sullivan married in 2015 in a ceremony on the Yale campus attended by Bill and Hillary Clinton, future Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Clinton gave a talk at the wedding.
Sullivan served in Clinton’s campaign and is now Biden’s national security adviser, the top White House official on all foreign issues, including Israel’s war with Hamas and the war in Ukraine.
Goodlander isn’t as well-known as Sullivan, who has become the face of Biden’s foreign policy, but she comes from a famous New Hampshire family and has an impressive resume of her own.
Her grandfather, Samuel Tamposi, was the son of Romanian immigrants and a real estate developer who brought many Fortune 500 companies to the state, including Fidelity Investments, Anheuser Busch and Coca-Cola.
He was also part owner of the Boston Red Sox and was friends with legendary player Ted Williams.
Goodlander emphasized those roots in her announcement video.
She introduces herself as ‘Maggie Tamposi Goodlander’ and begins her pitch to voters featuring a conversation with her and her mother Betty, a well-known political figure in the state.
In it, Betty describes how she had to give birth on election day, but insisted on stopping at the polling place on the way to the hospital so she could vote.
‘I have to vote. I’m in New Hampshire, girl. This is what we do,” Betty Tamposi says in the video.
Sam Tamposi also became a major player in Republican politics, raising millions and becoming a power broker among the Republican party.
Goodlander’s mother, Betty Tamposi, ran for Congress in the Second Congressional District in 1988, but lost in the Republican primary.
Betty Tamposi has close ties to the Bush and Sununu families and was appointed Assistant Secretary of State under President George HW Bush. Tamposi was fired during the 1992 election due to a controversy over Bill Clinton’s passport information.
During the 1992 election, when Clinton was running against her boss, President George HW Bush, Tamposi had Clinton’s passport information sent to her home in Virginia, claiming she was protecting it from tampering.
At the time, Clinton’s travels as a student and his draft reports on the Vietnam War were major political issues.
Although unclassified, passport information is protected by the Privacy Act and access is limited to those who need it for official government business.
Bush ultimately fired her because Tamposi’s deputies also searched the passport files of independent presidential candidate Ross Perot during the campaign, prompting Perot to accuse the Bush administration of a “gross abuse of federal power.”
Maggie Goodlander comes from a famous political family in New Hampshire and highlighted those roots in her announcement video
Goodlander’s grandfather Sam Tamposi (left) was co-owner of the Boston Red Sox and friends with legendary player Ted Williams (right)
Goodlander’s mother Betty Tamposi was a top State Department official under President George HW Bush
Goodlander’s father, Theodore Goodlander, is also a real estate developer and businessman. Her parents’ divorce in 2009 made headlines in New Hampshire newspapers as the couple had a bitter battle over the family’s financial assets.
Despite Tamposi’s ties to Republicans, Goodlander would run for the Democratic Party.
In many ways, her story parallels Annie Kuster, the woman she would try to replace in Congress. Kuster’s parents were prominent Republican officials in New Hampshire, but she became a Democrat.
A graduate of Yale Law, Goodlander clerked for Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and taught constitutional law at the University of New Hampshire Law School and Dartmouth.
She is a Navy reservist and worked as an intelligence officer for eleven years. She also serves on the board of the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation.
She and Sullivan met at a security conference in Munich when she was working for Lieberman.
