Second Congressional District Democrat Colin Van Ostern says his opponent Maggie Goodlander needs to tell the truth about her financial interests, echoing calls from a good government watchdog group about her lack of transparency.
A new report from The Hill published Friday revealed her mandatory financial disclosures have left experts “puzzled” because she “lists the value of multiple easily verifiable assets as ‘undetermined,’ including checking, retirement and investment accounts; treasury notes; cash bonds; and several properties or pieces of land, even those the report indicates are currently for sale.”
“To be perfectly honest, this was pretty bizarre,” Danielle Caputo, legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Hill. “I can’t remember a time where I saw ‘undetermined’ listed as a value of an asset, let alone dozens of times.”
According to The Hill, “Examples of assets in which the value was noted as ‘undetermined’ include an individual retirement account (IRA) from Fidelity Investments and a retirement savings account from Yale University.”
Goodlander, who is part of a D.C. power couple with her husband, Biden national security advisor Jake Sullivan, is a member of Nashua’s wealthy Tamposi family. Her grandfather, Samuel A. Tamposi, owned a real estate empire that “at his death stretched from New Hampshire to Florida,” according to The New York Times. He became a part-owner of the Boston Red Sox in 1977.
Critics say Goodlander is hoping to withhold information about her vast family wealth until after the competitive Democratic primary.
While Goodlander was born in Nashua, she attended exclusive Groton boarding school in Massachusets and has not lived in the district since at least 2005. Working in D.C., and with a multi-million-dollar house in Portsmouth, she only recently rented a home in Nashua.
In response to reporting on her lack of financial disclosures, the Van Ostern campaign released a statement “calling on Goodlander to immediately submit a clear filing as required by law – and asking for the update to be submitted today.”
Van Ostern’s campaign manager Jordan Kathleen Burns said, “Given the massive out-of-state money that is currently trying to buy this election from Washington, voters deserve to know what holdings and financial relationships are involved in Maggie Goodlander’s four trust funds, her 36+ investment properties, and who knows what else that is being obscured by this partial filing – which today been deeply questioned by nonpartisan observers.
“The primary election is 11 days away – we cannot afford to delay this transparency until after the primary debates next week, after it is too late for many primary voters see it, or to be blindsided in the general election with more new facts once again exposed about her out-of-state state wealth and connections.
“We are asking Maggie Goodlander to file a new, fully transparent financial disclosure by Close of Business today to give voters an honest view of her financial ties and connections – especially critical as dark-money out-of-state SuperPACs have now spent over $1,000,000 on her behalf to buy this seat from Washington,” Burns said.
Goodlander did not respond to a request for comment from NHJournal.
Matthew Bartlett, a Nashua native and Republican campaign veteran, mocked Goodlander’s lack of transparency.
“It must be hard to count every dollar of lavish generational wealth but for someone who has spent years in the federal government in DC, a financial disclosure should be routine as it is required for virtually every job she and her husband have had,” Bartlett said.
Van Ostern has made Goodlander’s out-of-state financial support an issue in this campaign, telling radio host Jack Heath during an on-air debate that “PAC money has flooded our state in this face on behalf of my opponent.
“Maggie has taken. I think it’s about four times as much money from the DC area as she has from people here in New Hampshire,” Van Ostern said.
“I think that the way to be a great representative for people is not based on how close your connections are to people in power in Washington, DC, or how many years you’ve spent in the halls of power with the big special interests. I think it’s how you represent the people of New Hampshire.”
Goodlander pushed back.
“I’m proud of the support we’ve gotten from all across the district, and I’m proud of the support I’ve gotten from my colleagues who I’ve worked with for my entire career in the Navy, at the Justice Department, at the White House… all across this country,” Goodlander said.
“We’ve got to win this fall, and we’re going to need to raise the money, just as [U.S. Senator] Maggie Hassan had to raise the money two years ago, so do we to keep this seat blue.”
Developing…
