A Chinese immigrant and libertarian-leaning Republican, Lily Tang Williams, is running an underdog campaign for New Hampshire’s second congressional district against a native Granite Stater from a political family with deep pockets, Maggie Goodlander, who is married to President Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan.

If one were to write a screenplay about the political realignment of the last decade, this race would be cut as an unrealistic caricature. The Republican candidate poses with semi-automatic rifles, is a free speech absolutist with 80,000 followers on X, and is running on her personal story of fleeing Communist China for freedom.

The Democratic candidate, Ms. Goodlander, is worth tens of millions of dollars and checks off every establishment box: She is Yale educated, worked for Senator McCain, was a White House aide to President Biden, and Hillary Clinton not only endorsed her but did a reading at her wedding. Several members of the Soros family have donated the maximum to her campaign.

“She’s part of the swamp,” Ms. Tang Williams tells The New York Sun. “Maggie was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. I’m not using that against her — she cannot control who she was born with — but also she has been in Washington for 15 years.”

This race may exemplify national political trends, but it is also uniquely New Hampshire. Ms. Tang Williams, 60, is a “free stater,” who moved to New Hampshire in 2019 as part of the Free State Project, a movement to persuade “liberty lovers” to move to the “Live Free or Die” state to create a libertarian homeland.

“My whole life is about chasing freedom,” Ms. Tang Williams tells the Sun. “I left China for free America. I come to New Hampshire to embrace ‘Live Free or Die’ — our values.”

Ms. Tang Williams built her following online and in rightwing circles through her Second Amendment advocacy and her warnings that cancel culture and identity politics are a Western version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She emigrated to America in 1988 for graduate school, but she says she really came for freedom after meeting a Fulbright scholar in China who told her about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and agreed to sponsor her.

She met her husband on her first night in America. They have three grown children together. He is a retired engineer, and she speaks around the country about the threat of communism. She built a successful property rental business. She jokes that she read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” to learn about business and cash flow.

“I am the embodiment of the American Dream,” Ms. Tang Williams says.

Ms. Tang Williams left the Republican Party in 2008 over her opposition to the Patriot Act and the bank bailouts. In 2016, she ran for United States Senate from Colorado as a Libertarian and was active in the party until she switched her registration back to Republican in 2019.

Since then, she has called herself a liberty Republican. This strain of Republican is common in New Hampshire, and is growing nationally — at least with the online right and a younger generation of podcasters.  

Ms. Goodlander, 37, is running on protecting abortion rights and democracy from “extremist Republicans.” She doesn’t mention Ms. Tang Williams by name in her ads or social media, but the implication is clear: Ms. Tang Williams is one of these extremists.

The race has drawn national attention because of Ms. Goodlander’s connections to power. She is a staunch defender of Mr. Biden and the administration in which her husband still works. She introduced Mr. Biden on Tuesday at a Democratic campaign office at Concord and posted a photograph to Instagram of them holding hands. She calls Mr. Biden “one of the best presidents America has ever known.” 

Ms. Goodlander used the story of her miscarrying at 20 weeks to help her beat a male Democratic opponent in the primary. “This is personal,” was her ad’s tagline. She has also had to fend off “carpetbagger” accusations, since she didn’t live in the district until she rented an apartment at Nashua after jumping in the race. 

Ms. Goodlander then told the Boston Globe that Congress needs “more renters” like herself, which got her in trouble since she owns a home at Portsmouth — in the state’s first congressional district — that’s worth more than $2 million, according to Zillow. She and her husband also have a home at Washington DC.

“I’m New Hampshire born and raised. This is where I learned to love freedom,” she says in one of her ads. In another she calls Nashua her “family’s home for over 100 years.”

Ms. Goodlander declined to speak with the Sun. Her campaign strategy, though, is working. She is articulate and polished in her ads and limited interviews. She is polling more than ten points ahead of Ms. Tang Williams, who has bought only one round of radio ads with just two weeks to go until election day. Ms. Goodlander has raised $3.4 million to Ms. Tang Williams’s $500,000.

“Goodlander has millions and millions of special interest money from D.C. pouring into her campaign,” a Republican strategist, Dave Carney, tells the Sun.

“This is a seat that Republicans have not held since 2010 — the Tea Party year — when Charlie Bass, a moderate Republican, incredibly well known, squeaked it by. That ain’t Lily,” a Republican strategist and former Trump appointee, Matthew Bartlett, tells the Sun. “Her views appeal to a very small, vocal, and enthusiastic minority.”

Ms. Tang Williams is crisscrossing her district trying to get her message out and to combat the label “extremist.” She says she is personally pro-life but acknowledges that it’s a difficult issue because both the baby and the mother are lives worth protecting. “You don’t know what the girl, what a woman’s situation is,” she says. She says she supports President Trump’s position of leaving the issue to the states.  

“I’m not a gun nut,” she says, but she’s built her political following largely among Second Amendment absolutists. She believes in climate change but opposes government mandates to address it. She opposes transgender participation in women’s sports and transgender medical procedures for minors, which she calls “child abuse.”

Yet she says adults should be able to do with their bodies what they like. Ms. Tang Williams is a vocal supporter of Trump and jokes that she tells people who are upset by his rhetoric to “look at the policies — you don’t have to marry him.”

Unlike the current GOP under Trump, Ms. Tang Williams is a fiscal conservative who is worried about the national debt. She wants limited government, opposes a nanny state, is an defender of free speech, and warns that “our federal government has gone totally 1984.” 

“I tell people not to be afraid of the Free State Project,” Ms. Tang Williams says. “I am for individual rights and liberty.”

She also says she can’t speak for everyone in the Free State Project or the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, in which she has no involvement and whose X account has garnered widespread attention for its inflammatory posts. “I’m not responsible for the entire project,” she says.

Whether or not Ms. Tang Williams wins, many free staters see her Republican primary win as a victory in itself and a testament to their growing political power.

Mr. Carney, though, disagrees. “It’s a movement of a few thousand people that has zero impact,” he says. “There are more progressive legislators who want to cut off a kid’s junk without telling their parents than there are free staters in the legislature.”

What Republicans are worried about in this race and others in the state is the impact of outside money, influence, and even door knockers from New Hampshire’s progressive neighbors, most notably “Taxachusetts.” New Hampshire Republicans are fighting to keep their state’s purplish — and red in the statehouse — hue as its New England neighbors turn increasingly blue.

The only “toss up” governor’s election in the nation is in New Hampshire. The slogan of a Republican, Kelly Ayotte, is “Don’t Mass Up New Hampshire.”

“Maggie Goodlander has institutional advantage, money, demographics,” the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, Chris Ager, tells the Sun. “Winning one congressional race in New Hampshire is likely not going to change the balance of power in Washington.”

“Who wins the governor’s race will affect Granite Staters every single day of that term,” Mr. Ager says.