Maggie Goodlander spent years in DC working in all branches of government. On Tuesday, voters in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District sent her back to the capital as their new U.S. representative.

Goodlander, a former Biden administration official with deep political connections, will replace Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster, who has held the seat since 2013 and did not stand for re-election. For months, Goodlander has viewed her time in D.C. positively as her opponents criticized her time out of the district.

She focused her campaign on tackling the “bullies” she described as big corporations and extreme politicians. Goodlander also entered the race with one deeply personal story: She needed immediate care after losing her son when he was 20 weeks pregnant. Instead, she said, she faced delays caused by an influx of patients from states with restrictive abortion laws. Because her appointment was scheduled a day late, she was forced to deliver her stillborn son in a hotel bathtub.

Goodlander has said she would “fight like hell” to restore federal abortion protections once they were guaranteed Roe v. Wadewhich was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2022.

Around 11:30 p.m., Goodlander, 38, hugged supporters in Concord and exclaimed, “You guys, thank you — it’s official.” Almost official, she added. Her Republican opponent had just called on her to concede.

Speaking to reporters, Goodlander — who served in the Biden administration as a senior White House adviser and Justice Department official — said she would work to represent all of her constituents, regardless of whether they voted for her. To be productive in Congress, she said she would build on President Joe Biden’s “unity agenda,” which she briefly helped lead. It focused on addressing issues related to mental health, Big Tech, veterans, cancer and the opioid epidemic.

The Nashua resident defeated Lily Tang Williams, a libertarian-leaning Republican who has launched several unsuccessful bids for Congress in Colorado and New Hampshire. Williams, a real estate manager who said she feared the U.S. was becoming more like her native China, advocated cuts in government spending, including eliminating the Department of Education, and wanted the issue of abortion to remain with the states. Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Williams endorsed on Sunday.

With 86 percent of the vote, Goodlander led Williams 53.6 percent to 46.4 percent. The race was called by the Associated Press at 1:07 a.m Before the polls closed, Williams posted online: “I’m a winner regardless of the outcome tonight.”

Although this was her first run for public office, Goodlander has been deeply involved in politics throughout her life. Her mother, Elizabeth Tamposi, is a former Republican state representative who worked in the administration of President George HW Bush; her grandfather, Samuel Tamposi, was a real estate developer involved in Republican politics.

After being raised in Nashua, Goodlander earned bachelor’s and law degrees from Yale. She has spent her career in various government positions: an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve; a speechwriter and foreign policy adviser to independent Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut; a speechwriter for Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona; and law clerk to Merrick Garland, then chief judge of the DC Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

Less than a year ago, prior to her run for Congress, she rented a house in Nashua, in the 2nd District. At a forum in October, Goodlander said she plans to raise her future children in the 2nd District.

“I am a renter and there should be more renters in Congress,” Goodlander said The Boston Sphere — a statement that drew criticism over the $1.2 million home she and her husband, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, own in the 1st district.

Goodlander has repeatedly defended her ties to the district, saying she is a “Nashua girl” through and through and pointing to her time teaching constitutional law at Dartmouth and the University of New Hampshire. “This is the district that made me who I am,” she said at a forum.

The national party establishment helped propel her to Congress. Amid a heated primary against former Executive Councilman Colin Van Ostern, Goodlander received support from Hillary Clinton, who in 2015, in between fundraisers for her presidential run, gave a lecture at Goodlander’s wedding, according Politics. Sullivan, her husband, had been an adviser to Clinton.

Goodlander had a fundraising advantage of about a million dollars, including much of it cash from out of state – about her main opponent, who quickly came behind her after losing the race by 28 points. In the general election, Goodlander outraised and outspent Williams several times OpenSecretsa nonprofit organization that tracks campaign finance.

Now Goodlander returns to DC with a new kind of government crackdown.