'I Love This Country': Tang Williams Gets Emotional Over Attacks From Left And Right

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

Second Congressional District GOP candidate Lily Tang Williams has had big television moments, most notably her tirade against “elitist” Democrat Maggie Goodlander during 2024’s WMUR debate.

Last week, however, she had a different kind of TV moment, one that caught many of her supporters off guard. The hard-charging, energetic Williams began weeping during her appearance on WMUR’s “Close Up.”

“I love this country, and people keep attacking me, thinking I have an agenda,” Tang Williams said. “I don’t get it. I want to keep the American Dream alive.”

The China-born Republican nominee, who lives in Weare, is facing off against Goodlander in a rematch of their 2024 race.

“Sorry about that. I get emotional,” she told WMUR. “I made a personal sacrifice to speak the truth and run for office. Now, the other side just attacks me, doesn’t trust me, and connects me to certain groups. But they never come to my town hall. They never ask me questions.”

One set of attacks is from the political left, where she has received profane, vulgar attacks accusing her of being, as one handwritten note put it, “another c*** Free Stater b*tch.” She’s accused of being a far-right MAGA extremist.

From the right, she’s smeared as a potential Chinese Communist Party spy, a secret operative of the communist regime she fled.

She said the accusations are especially painful because criticizing the CCP has come at a personal cost. Williams said she has been blacklisted by Chinese authorities since 2019.

“I’m blacklisted. Haven’t seen my family for 11 years. I miss them,” she said.

In follow-up comments to NHJournal, Williams said about 30 relatives remain in China, including her younger brother and his wife, uncles, an aunt and cousins.

Williams also described threatening messages sent to her campaign’s Facebook page and a threat on X that she attributed to the Chinese Communist Party: “Trash, PLA Grandpa will crush your doggy head.”

She said she blocks and deletes many hostile messages. At the same time, Williams said some Republican critics have suggested she is connected to the Chinese regime or could be a Chinese spy, without providing evidence. She said some prominent accounts on X have refused to support her campaign because she was born outside the United States.

“You have a right side say people like me should not even run for Congress because I wasn’t born here,” Williams told NHJournal.

In Washington, some Republicans are promoting legislation that would ban naturalized American citizens from holding some federal offices—including serving in Congress.

The Constitution currently allows naturalized citizens to serve in Congress. House members must be at least 25, have been U.S. citizens for seven years, and live in the state they represent when elected.

Williams said attacks from the left often focus on her association with the Free State Project.

“I think (the) most hateful stuff (is) coming from people who connect me with the Free State Project,” she told NHJournal.

Williams wrote a 2020 essay for the project’s website describing her move to Weare in November 2019 and the volunteers who helped her and her husband unload their moving truck. In the essay, she encouraged others who shared her views on liberty to consider moving to New Hampshire.

She told NHJournal she has written for the organization and spoken at its events but is not particularly active in it. She described herself as a “small L libertarian” and said her political and community work extends well beyond the project.

“I don’t agree with some stuff they did,” Williams said of some people associated with the movement.

Williams said critics who question her views could attend her town halls or speak with her directly. Instead, she said, some keep attacking her without asking questions.

Her public display of emotion also carried a personal significance rooted in her childhood in China.

“I could not cry publicly in China because personal emotional expressions are suppressed,” Williams told NHJournal in a written statement.

As the oldest of three children, she said she helped care for her infant brother when she was 6, while her parents worked.

“I had to be always strong for them,” she said.

While people who’ve seen Williams on the campaign trail might have been surprised by her emotional outburst, one person definitely wasn’t: her husband.

“My husband said, ‘You get emotional all the time.’ He said, ‘I don’t know what it is, but when you get emotional, you make other people cry.’”

Still, she said, she felt a little embarrassed by the televised moment because people usually see her as a tough, outspoken candidate.

“I guess I just couldn’t help it,” she told NHJournal.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.