by Claire Sullivan, New Hampshire Bulletin
October 29, 2024

In a Monday forum for the 2nd Congressional District, the candidates agreed on little – except that the so-called American dream is under threat. 

“I’ve talked to so many voters across this district for whom the American dream is just simply out of reach,” said Democrat Maggie Goodlander, a lawyer. Republican Lily Tang Williams, a rental property manager who said she achieved the American dream with a “bit of hard work” after leaving China with “nothing,” said she was running to save that dream for future generations.

Neither explicitly defined what that dream was, but it’s often thought of as the idea that with hard work, people can propel themselves upward. The crumbling of that idea was one of the only points of agreement between candidates in the forum hosted by NHPR and the Granite State News Collaborative. 

They describe the threat in different ways. Goodlander has said she will take on “bullies” such as big corporations and extreme politicians; Williams, instead, targets government spending and overreach. In the forum, the candidates shared their vision on issues like the economy, foreign policy, and abortion, their differing views of the role of government often at the center of their clashes.

The forum was the first time Goodlander and Williams shared a stage. They will debate again on WMUR on Thursday. Williams criticized her opponent for not debating her on college campuses.

Goodlander, a Nashua native, is a first-time candidate, though she has spent her life deep in politics. Her mother, Elizabeth Tamposi, is a former Republican state representative who worked in the administration of President George H.W. Bush; her grandfather, Samuel Tamposi, was a real estate developer involved in Republican politics. Goodlander is married to Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser. She rented a home in the district less than a year ago before launching her campaign.

Goodlander has argued to voters that her time in D.C. – most recently as a Department of Justice official and a senior White House adviser – would help her be effective in Congress. But Williams has said she is part of the “swamp.”

Williams, who lives in Weare, ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in the 2nd District in 2022, but this time she clinched the win in a crowded field. In 2016, she was the Libertarian candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Colorado; she captured 3.6 percent of the vote in the general election. She also launched a failed bid in Colorado for a U.S. House seat in 2014.

Williams has described her upbringing in China as central to her politics, pointing during the forum to her tagline: “I fear the country I love is becoming the country I left.” She came to the U.S. in 1988 for graduate school and moved to New Hampshire several years ago after signing the pledge of the Free State Project, an organization that encourages Libertarians to move to the state, though she told NHPR she is not active in the group.

Here’s what the candidates said on key issues.

Economy

Williams, who calls herself a “communism survivor,” said she generally supports free trade – but that tariffs on China are justified because of national security concerns.

She points to the national debt and “out-of-control spending” as a major issue preventing younger generations from accessing the “American dream.” She supports a hiring freeze in the federal government to evaluate where cuts should be made, and she said on her campaign website that she wants to eliminate the federal Department of Education. 

Williams also pointed to a plan from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, to cut six pennies off of every dollar the federal government plans to spend in the next five fiscal years to balance the budget.

“If we put politics aside and bring everybody to the table, I hope we can get that done for (the) good interest of our people and our country,” Williams said.

Goodlander said her economic vision is based on “fairness.” She opposes tax cuts under former President Donald Trump to large corporations and the wealthy, and said tax cuts should instead go to working families. 

“The American dream of having a home is out of reach because the cost of housing is just too high,” Goodlander said

Asked whether she would support cuts in any area of the federal budget, Goodlander said there’s “a lot of room for improvement in how we think about our defense spending,” saying “we should be taking a close look so that we’re not in a situation where hundreds of millions of dollars can sometimes be a rounding error in our budget.”

Foreign policy

Goodlander did not directly answer questions about whether she would support halting weapon shipments to Israel. A moderator said recent polling shows a majority of Americans want such shipments to stop.

“As a general matter, I believe that one of the most important investments we can make in the Middle East for our own national security is to continue to deepen the relationship between the United States and Israel,” Goodlander responded when asked again whether she would favor pausing the weapons, emphasizing her support of a strong relationship between Israel and the U.S.

Goodlander said she wants to see the return of “the status quo that we saw before Oct. 7,” referring to a 2023 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,200 people, through a ceasefire. She said hostages taken by Hamas must be sent home and that the U.S. must “surge humanitarian assistance into Gaza.” Israel has killed more than 43,000 people in Gaza, Al Jazeera has reported. That includes more than 16,000 children.

Williams also did not directly answer a question about whether she would support an arms embargo. She argued Oct. 7 would have never happened if there had been stronger leadership in the White House. “It’s unfortunate for the innocent people who are involved in this Middle East conflict,” but she said Israel has a right to exist and defend itself.

Asked if she would support continuing the current level of U.S. aid to Israel, which has totaled $18 billion since the war began, she pointed instead to the larger spending on Ukraine. The Council on Foreign Relations puts that figure at more than $100 billion in direct aid since the Russian invasion in 2022.

“I want to have our foreign policy look at each country’s separate deals instead of lump(ing) them together. Ukraine and Israel, Taiwan are totally three separate deals,” she said. “We need to look at each places’ (deal), each bill separately.”

Abortion

On abortion, the divide between Goodlander and Williams is sharp. 

Goodlander has lambasted the U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and ended longstanding federal abortion protections, while Williams said she supported the issue returning to the states.

Goodlander attacked her opponent on that point.

“That means that she has judged it the right thing to do to put that power in the hands of politicians at the state level,” Goodlander said. “I know from my own professional experience that when we try to do that, lines are hard to draw, and people lose their lives.”

After Goodlander finished answering the question on abortion, Williams jumped in and said: “So you don’t trust people to decide in our … state? You know, that’s (the) most democratic way to decide.”

Goodlander responded that she does “not believe that politicians have any place in between women and their health care provider.” Williams countered: “They’re not politicians in D.C.?”

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