In a House Race in N.H., a Famous Spouse, and a Traumatic Pregnancy

Maggie Tamposi Goodlander, the wife of the national security adviser, is navigating a personal landscape with little precedent in her run for Congress in New Hampshire.

Share full article
1

For Maggie Goodlander, the complications of giving birth to a stillborn son helped inspire her to run for a House seat in her native New Hampshire to help restore abortion rights.

Maggie Tamposi Goodlander gave birth to her stillborn son in a hotel bathtub on Easter.

Her fetus had been diagnosed with a fatal condition and had died in her womb. Doctors recommended a two-day procedure to remove him, with an overnight stay at a hotel near the hospital. If she went into labor, they feared, she could hemorrhage.

But getting an appointment took weeks. The procedure that Ms. Goodlander needed is also commonly used for abortions later in pregnancy. Doctors across the northeast were flooded with patients traveling north from states where abortion had been banned after the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Her surgery came just a day too late: Ms. Goodlander, 37, delivered the baby in 2023 at a hotel near the hospital, relying on her experience taking a hypnobirthing course on YouTube. The harrowing experience, she said, exposed her in a deeply personal way to the new reality of a post-Roe America and inspired her politically, helping fuel a desire to run for a House seat in her native New Hampshire to help fight for abortion rights.

But there was another remarkable element to her experience. The national security adviser to the president, Jake Sullivan, was there, too — in his unofficial capacity, as her husband.

As she enters the race for New Hampshire’s second district, Ms. Goodlander comes armed with a powerful story, an impeccable résumé and deep connections in Washington and New Hampshire. Yet as she campaigns across western New Hampshire, she will have to navigate a personal landscape with little precedent.

There are only a handful of examples of the spouse of a high-ranking official running for federal office, and none when that official has been at the center of one of the most divisive issues in global and domestic politics — the war in Gaza.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.