Colin Van Ostern, Tuck ’09, and Maggie Goodlander, candidates in the Democratic primary to represent New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District, will debate at Dartmouth next week as they vie to replace retiring six-term U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster ’78, D-N.H.
The debate, co-hosted by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, the Dartmouth Democrats, and the Hanover/Lyme Town Democrats, is scheduled from 5 to 7 p.m. on Monday, July 22, in Filene Auditorium in the Moore Building on campus. The event is open to the public and registration is strongly suggested. The debate will also be livestreamed.
The evening will be moderated by Dartmouth Democrats Quinn Allred ’26 and Lucy Vitali ’26. A meet and greet with the public will follow.
The Dartmouth connection runs through this primary election, not only with alums Kuster and Van Ostern, but also with Goodlander, who taught Constitutional Law, Development, and Theory at Dartmouth in the Department of Government and Rockefeller Center in the 2023 summer term. Goodlander is married to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who was a Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth in 2019 and a fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center of International Understanding in 2020.
Van Ostern served two terms on New Hampshire’s Executive Council from 2013 to 2017, representing the Concord area, and was the 2016 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, losing by a close margin to Republican Chris Sununu in the general election. Van Ostern is a longtime Democratic Party activist and served as a senior adviser to U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Kuster.
In the private sector, Van Ostern, who has a BA from George Washington University along with his MBA from Tuck, has worked for Stonyfield Yogurt, technology investor Alumni Ventures, and Southern New Hampshire University. He lives in Concord with his wife and two sons.
Goodlander served 11 years as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve. Early in her career she served as an aide to U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and as a speechwriter for U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, she clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. She served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in the first impeachment of then-President Donald Trump and later was deputy assistant attorney general in the Biden administration. She has also served on the boards of the New Hampshire Women’s Foundation, New Hampshire Legal Assistance, the World Affairs Council of New Hampshire, and the Rudman Center Advisory Board.
Goodlander was born and raised in Nashua, and her grandfather, Sam Tamposi, was a major player in state Republican politics. Her mother, Betty Tamposi, ran for the House in 1988 in the 2nd Congressional District but lost in the GOP primary and then served as assistant secretary of state for consular affairs in the administration of President George H.W. Bush.
The district includes Concord and Nashua, New Hampshire’s second-largest city, and runs through Keene and the Upper Valley to the Canadian border.
The Rockefeller Center is working with the Dartmouth Conservatives and the Young Republicans to arrange a debate with the candidates in the Republican primary for the House district. Thirteen Republicans have filed to run in the primary, including Bill Hamlen ’84, a Hanover resident.
Rocky is also working with the groups to bring the GOP candidates for governor—former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and former New Hampshire Senate President Chuck Morse—to Hanover. They are running to succeed Sununu, who isn’t running again after four terms in office.
The Democratic candidates for governor, Joyce Craig, Jonathan Kiper, and Cinde Warmington, debated at Dartmouth in May.
