After the results of her primary election came in, Maggie Goodlander waded through a sea of supporters, hugged her family members and took the stage, describing it as an “out of body” experience.

Yet the location was anything but foreign.

That very restaurant, Martha’s Exchange Restaurant & Bar, had played a recurring role in the Nashua native’s life. That night she continued the tradition, celebrating her nomination to represent New Hampshire’s 2nd District in Congress.

“This is a very special room for me. I’ve celebrated a lot of birthdays here, a lot of dance recitals, a piano recital, a failed effort to become a singer, right here in Martha’s,” Goodlander said.

The same is true for Goodlander around the rest of Nashua and New Hampshire, she said.

At the Nashua YMCA, for example, she struggled with swim lessons as a child but signed a “contract” with her dad promising to stick with it until she leveled up from “guppy” to “minnow.” Goodlander credits the pool there for the skills she’d eventually use to pass the U.S. Navy’s swim test.

On the campaign trail, Goodlander, who’s worked in national politics for 15 years, hammers home popular Democratic talking points. She emphasizes that “freedom is on the ballot” this election, warns of Donald Trump and Project 2025 and vows to support reproductive rights.

She draws on her New Hampshire roots often. She welcomes questions from voters with a line that routinely earns laughs from the crowd: “Growing up here, you learn how to grill a candidate before you learn how to grill a hot dog.” (She remembers grilling former President George W. Bush on the Middle East when he did a town hall at Nashua High School during his 2004 reelection campaign.)

That distinctly New Hampshire culture of political and community involvement keeps her coming back to her home state. She and her husband, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, own a house in Portsmouth. She has also taught law classes at UNH and Dartmouth College.

“People are deeply engaged,” Goodlander said. “They care deeply and are open and susceptible to reason and to argument.”

Goodlander made her career in federal government and politics, amassing an extensive resume her supporters believe qualifies her for the job. She served in the U.S. Navy Reserves for 11 years, worked as a foreign policy adviser in the Senate, including for Republican John McCain; clerked for then-Chief Judge Merrick Garland in the appeals court and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer; worked as legal counsel on the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump; and spent three years at the Justice Department. Shortly before running for Congress, she spent a few months as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, leading the White House Unity Agenda.

While she has spent much of her career out of the Granite State, Goodlander said her New Hampshire roots run deep. She’s a member of the Tamposi family, a Nashua dynasty of sorts. Her grandfather, Sam Tamposi, was a real-estate mogul and influential political player, and her mom, Betty Tamposi, served in the New Hampshire Legislature.

Some voters, however, view Goodlander as out of touch with her home state – something her primary opponent, former Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern, used as fodder for attacks. She leased a property in the district shortly before launching her congressional bid and drew attention for painting herself as a renter – her Portsmouth home is worth $1.2 million.

Van Ostern’s supporters often said they felt like she was an outsider.

To that, Goodlander has said she believes her work on the national stage has served New Hampshire, especially on issues like the opioid and mental health crises, which she says are “New Hampshire’s fights.”

“I come to this race with a deep love and passion for this state and this district and a complete commitment to fighting and delivering for this district on day one,” she said in August.

In that same vein, she has also received criticism for drawing on a large out-of-state funding pool, which isn’t unusual for congressional races in New Hampshire. She has raised more than $2.3 million total, and in her first weeks on the campaign trail, 88% of her donations came from external addresses. That flipped later in the summer – the campaign reported that nearly two-thirds of individual contributions came from New Hampshire addresses from July through mid-August.

“People across the country understand and see the importance of New Hampshire in American democracy,” Goodlander said. “I’m proud to have the support of groups that share my values and that share, I think, the values of the state.”

She hinges her campaign on a promise to fight for the little guy, focusing on policies that she says will protect democracy, expand access to reproductive healthcare and take on corporate monopolies that are raising costs for Granite Staters. Goodlander’s own assets could be worth more than $30 million due to real estate holdings and a trust in her name that has between $5 million and $25 million, according to financial disclosures required for congressional candidates.

One of the biggest issues on Goodlander’s campaign platform is reproductive freedom. She often shares with voters her personal experience of needing that care. Last year, when she was 20 weeks pregnant, she lost her baby. Goodlander was unable to get immediate medical care, which caused her to navigate the stillbirth on her own in a hotel bathtub, she states on her website. While she eventually received the care she needed, Goodlander says many women in the United States don’t have that option. In Congress, she’d support enacting a federal right to abortion, among other initiatives to expand reproductive freedoms.

Goodlander supports many of the gun reforms that are popular among Democrats and has said she’ll take on the National Rifle Association and gun industry, work toward banning assault weapons and bump stocks and institute universal background checks.

On immigration, she has said federal immigration law needs to be updated and that Congress should work to quickly pass legislation to help immigrants. After having worked on an ill-fated immigration reform bill early in her career, she said at a Dartmouth College forum that “sometimes comprehensive can be the enemy of progress.”

In her speeches, Goodlander portrays herself as a fighter, someone who will stand up to bullies. She pledges to tackle corporate monopolies and work to protect democracy through voting rights, campaign finance reform and other means.

At the same time, she emphasizes the importance of finding common ground. While leading the Unity Agenda, she said she worked on issues that everyone is affected by and everyone can get behind, things like support for the mental health and opioid crises, helping veterans and holding the tech industry accountable.

Growing up in a family with mixed political views – her mom ran for this same congressional district as a Republican back in the 1980s – Goodlander said she learned early on to work with and love people with different perspectives from her own, even though it makes for lively conversation at the family dinner table.

She attributes that partly to New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, which she said served as a “testing ground” for developing her political views.

“As a middle child and as a person who grew up with a lot of differing views swirling around, I think you develop an ability to really find common ground and do it authentically to yourself and to your values,” Goodlander said. “It’s sort of always been second nature to me in the work I’ve done to be able to do the same thing.”

She lives by a quote from former Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, who said that when governing, it’s important to find the 30% common ground. Goodlander said her 30% is finding issues like those on the White House Unity Agenda, where people can agree on a shared cause.

“Thirty percent is a really big chunk these days, a big piece of the pie,” Goodlander said. “You may only be able to hope for 3% on a good day, or even 0.3%, but how do you find that? It’s finding the issues that touch us all.”

Charlotte Matherly is the State House reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.