Neil Goldschmidt

Neil Edward Goldschmidt (June 16, 1940 - June 12, 2024) was an American businessman and Democratic politician from the state of Oregon who held local, state and federal offices over three decades. After serving as the governor of Oregon, Goldschmidt was once considered the most influential and powerful figure in Oregon's politics. His career and legacy were severely damaged by revelations that he had raped a young teenage girl in 1973, during his first term as mayor of Portland.

Biography

Goldschmidt was born in Eugene, in Oregon's Willamette Valley, on June 16, 1940, into a Jewish family to Lester H. Goldschmidt and Annette Levin. He graduated from South Eugene High School. He later attended the University of Oregon, also in Eugene. He served as student body president at the school before graduating in 1963 with a bachelor's degree in political science.

Goldschmidt served as an intern for U.S. Senator Maurine Neuberger in 1964 in Washington, D.C. While there, he was recruited by New York Congressman Allard K. Lowenstein to do voter registration in Mississippi's 1964 Freedom Summer civil rights campaign. Goldschmidt married Margaret Wood in 1965. They had two children, Joshua and Rebecca, and divorced in 1990. Goldschmidt earned a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967. From 1967 to 1970 he worked as a legal aid lawyer in Portland, Oregon.

Goldschmidt was elected to the Portland City Council in 1970 and then as mayor of Portland in 1972, becoming the youngest mayor of any major American city. He promoted the revitalization of Downtown Portland and was influential on Portland-area transportation policy, particularly with the scrapping of the controversial Mount Hood Freeway and the establishment of the MAX Light Rail system. He was appointed U.S. Secretary of Transportation by President Jimmy Carter in 1979; in that capacity he worked to revive the ailing automobile industry and to deregulate several industries. He served until the end of Carter's presidency in 1981 and then served as a senior executive with Nike for several years.

He was elected the 33rd governor of Oregon in 1986, serving a single term. He faced significant challenges, particularly a rising anti-tax movement (leading to Measure 5 in 1990) and a doubling of the state's prison population. He worked across party lines to reduce regulation and to repair the state's infrastructure. His reforms to the State Accident Insurance Fund (SAIF), a state-chartered worker's compensation insurance company were heralded at the time, but drew strong criticism in later years.

Despite his popularity, Goldschmidt did not seek a second term as governor, becoming an influential and controversial lobbyist. Over the next dozen years or so, he was criticized by editorial boards and Oregonians for several of the causes he supported, including backing the forestry corporation Weyerhaeuser in its hostile takeover of Oregon's Willamette Industries and his advocacy for a private investment firm in its attempt to take over Portland General Electric, a publicly-owned local utility company. In 2003, Governor Ted Kulongoski appointed Goldschmidt to the Oregon Board of Higher Education, a position he resigned after admitting he had a sexual relationship with a minor girl 30 years earlier.

Goldschmidt died from heart failure at his home in Portland, on June 12, 2024, at the age of 83, four days before his 84th birthday.