Colin Van Ostern and Maggie Goodlander exchanged a blitz of accusations about their backgrounds, funding and past political work, all of which have been prominent themes in their tense race for New Hampshire’s second congressional district.

During a debate at New England College on Wednesday, the candidates vying to clinch the Democratic nomination and replace Annie Kuster, who’s not seeking reelection, focused most intensely on reproductive rights and took aim at each other’s records.

Despite the heated exchanges at the debate, Goodlander and Van Ostern agree on many of the issues – they participated in a forum at Dartmouth College last month where they outlined mostly similar positions on gun regulation, immigration, LGBTQ rights, housing and the Israel-Hamas War.

Leading into an exchange on reproductive rights, Van Ostern admonished Goodlander for donations and past work she’s contributed to Republicans in Washington.

Goodlander fought back – that work was for U.S. Sen. John McCain, she said, on bipartisan legislation like sanctions on Russia, immigration reform and border security.

She also donated thousands of dollars to two Republican congressional candidates in the 2020 election cycle -- Justin Amash, an independent who’d left the Republican Party and voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, and Dan Driscoll, a friend and former law school classmate of Goodlander’s who unsuccessfully ran against Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina. Goodlander said Cawthorn was “one of the most extreme people to ever serve in the People’s House.”

“The reason we lost Roe is because of excuses like these,” Van Ostern said.

Goodlander said Roe v. Wade was overturned because of Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court. She also accused Van Ostern of working for an anti-abortion congressman. In 2000, Van Ostern served as the press secretary for Jim Turner in Texas, who was in Congress from 1997 to 2005 and received low ratings from multiple abortion-rights organizations, according to Vote Smart.

“You don’t see me sitting here and questioning your commitment to reproductive freedom,” Goodlander said. “How dare you question mine?”

Despite the back and forth, they align on their support for abortion access and reproductive rights. Van Ostern, who served on the Executive Council from 2013 to 2017, has said he ran for that seat to protect Planned Parenthood funding. While successful at the time, that funding has since been cut by the Republican-led council.

On the day the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Goodlander said, she was working at the Justice Department and helping to legally fight back. She also shared a personal connection to the issue – when she lost her own baby at 20 weeks of pregnancy last year, she was able to receive medical care. She pointed out that many people don’t have that option. 

One other point of contention from Wednesday’s debate was over New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary. When asked whether President Joe Biden was wrong to not put his name on the ballot in the Granite State earlier this year, Goodlander, who previously worked for the White House under Biden, didn’t answer directly.

“The right to vote is the right from which all of our rights flow, and the state of New Hampshire has been a model in how democracy can be done,” Goodlander said. When pressed by the moderator, Goodlander said that “we should restore the first [in the] nation primary. I’m focused on what we’re going to do moving forward.”

Van Ostern, on the other hand, said yes – Biden was wrong not to put his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot. He said he told the president so when he got a chance to speak to him in March.

“I stood up in a room like this and respectfully told him that it was important to those of us here in New Hampshire that our democracy be respected and our delegates be seated, and they weren’t,” Van Ostern said.

Van Ostern was also asked about his business background. Between his failed bid for Secretary of State a few years ago and his current congressional campaign, he was the president and chief operating officer of Alumni Ventures, a firm that was fined millions of dollars by the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission for misrepresenting its operations to investors and improperly transferring money between funds.

Van Ostern argues that the wrongdoing happened years before he joined the company and that when he came in, he worked to fix those problems. Alumni Ventures was charged by the SEC in March 2022. Van Ostern joined the company in October 2019, according to his LinkedIn page.

He then accused his opponent of turning the campaign negative – a political action committee backing Goodlander aired an ad about the Alumni Ventures fine that matched information on Goodlander’s website. Goodlander maintains that she’s running a positive campaign but that the election is a “job interview” where voters should know candidates’ recent experience.

Throughout the debate and the campaign, Van Ostern has emphasized Goodlander’s large amount of out-of-state money while touting his own “grassroots” support. Goodlander has outraised her opponent nearly two to one – $2.3 million compared to Van Ostern’s $1.3 million, as of their Aug. 21 filings.

Both of them, however, own millions in financial holdings. As first reported by NHPR, Goodlander’s assets could be worth more than $30 million due to real estate holdings and a trust in her name that holds anywhere from $5 million to $25 million in stocks, bonds and treasury notes, according to financial disclosures required for congressional candidates. Goodlander is a member of the Tamposi family in Nashua; her grandfather, Sam Tamposi, was a prominent real estate developer and businessman.

Van Ostern is also a multimillionaire, including three equity ownership grants in Alumni Ventures that are each worth $1 million to $5 million and his wife’s laundry service, which is worth between $500,000 and $1 million.

The two candidates are set to face off in the primary election on Tuesday, Sept. 10.

Charlotte Matherly is the State House reporter  fo r 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.