Maggie Tamposi Goodlander, a former White House aide to President Biden and a candidate for the vacant U.S. House seat in New Hampshire, owns a $1.2 million home but rents. It appeals and attracts attention.
“I'm a renter, and there should be more renters in Congress,” Goodlander, a Democrat running for the state's 2nd Congressional District, told The Boston Globe in his first interview since running for office.
But the declaration comes with an asterisk: She and Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, own a home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which the couple purchased in 2018 for about $1.2 million, according to NH Records. The website described the property as a “private oasis.”
Goodlander, who has deep political connections, taught law at the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College after moving to the seaside city of Portsmouth in 2018, but moved to work at the Justice Department after Biden was elected president. returned to Washington.
The Portsmouth home is in a different district than the one Mr. Goodlander is seeking to represent, but there are only two such districts in the state. The house Mr. Goodlander rented just before entering the campaign is in Nashua, New Hampshire. It is an electoral district that spans the entire state, including the entire western part of the state.
Representatives must be residents of the state they represent at the time of their election, but they do not have to reside in the district they represent.
The Daily Beast first reported that Goodlander's Portsmouth home was on the market for $1 million. A spokesman for Goodlander's campaign had no immediate comment Thursday.
Goodlander has dismissed concerns about his time spent outside New Hampshire by emphasizing his family's deep roots in the state, which he highlighted in the video announcing his candidacy. . Her mother, Betty Tamposi, was a Republican in the New Hampshire state legislature and ran for the same seat Goodlander is currently seeking.
Nashua has been “my family's home for over 100 years,” Goodlander said in her announcement video. Her family's long-owned home was sold in 2008, according to real estate website Zillow and public records.
Records show Goodlander voted absentee that same year as an undergraduate at Yale University, the last time she voted in the district she represents.
The seat Goodlander is running for is currently being vacated by Democratic Rep. Anne McClain Kuster, who announced in March that she would not seek re-election.
The race in a Democratic-leaning district has attracted a long list of candidates from both parties, including Democratic state Sen. Becky Whitley and former state Councilman Colin Van Ostern, who ran Kuster's first House campaign and was the party's gubernatorial candidate in 2016.
The primary election is scheduled to be held in September.