“You either die a hero,” said a character from a Batman movie, “or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Neil Goldschmidt, who died last week four days short of his 84th birthday, was once my hero but died the leading villain of Oregon politics.
The official portrait of Mayor Goldschmidt.
After working as a legal aid lawyer for several years, Goldschmidt joined his friend, homebuilder Tom Walsh, in running as reform candidates for the Portland City Council in 1970. Portland, they said, was run by a “good old boy” network that left minorities, low-income people, and many others out of the system. Goldschmidt won; Walsh lost.
Goldschmidt was charismatic and inspirational. My first job was as a summer intern for the Oregon Student Public Interest Research Group and I worked closely with Goldschmidt’s office on transportation issues, so I got to see and meet with him frequently. I was present when he announced his candidacy for mayor in 1972.
As mayor, Goldschmidt cancelled a planned Portland freeway and used the federal funds that had been dedicated to that freeway to build the city’s first light-rail line. Jimmy Carter thought that was such an innovative idea that he made Goldschmidt Secretary of Transportation. In that job, he supported the defunding of Amtrak because, one of his staff members told me, he hoped to capture Amtrak’s funds for the Department of Transportation’s budget. That made me upset as I was an Amtrak supporter at the time but it also provided me with a valuable lesson on how bureaucracies work.
After coming back to Oregon, he ran for and won a single term as governor. He would have been a shoe-in for re-election but for some reason did not run for a second term. Instead, he became a political consultant, doing things like arranging no-bid contracts for his clients to build new light-rail lines and sending housing subsidies to Tom Walsh’s homebuilding company. In essence, he had become the leader of the old boy network that he once promised to replace.
In 2004, Willamette Week newspaper — which had been founded by city councilor Goldschmidt’s top staff member — revealed that when he was mayor Goldschmidt had had a three-year “affair” with — meaning he raped — a 14- to 17-year-old girl who he had met when she babysat his own children. The girl, who had been a straight-A student, was convinced he was going to leave his wife and marry her, and when he didn’t she dropped out of high school and became a drug addict. When he was governor attorneys on her behalf asked him to pay her $250,000 to help her get through rehab (and of course on the condition that she would keep silent). He paid the money but she died at the age of 49.
While he was the villain for this girl in the 1970s, it was in the 1990s that he effectively raped the voters and taxpayers of Oregon, but it took his downfall in the statutory rape case for the public to realize that. As I’ve noted before, it appears that it takes a sex scandal to make people question the wisdom of rail transit follies. It was only after Goldschmidt’s disgrace that local media began reporting the extent of his new good old boy network.
“The term ‘light-rail mafia’ is tossed around by journalists, planners and elected officials to describe the Goldschmidt-connected people working on regional transit projects,” revealed Jim Redden, writing in the Portland Tribune shortly after the Willamette Week‘s exposé. Redden described “Neil’s network,” naming some two-dozen people (including Tom Walsh) and a similar number of organizations (including TriMet, Portland’s transit agency) that Goldschmidt used or who benefitted from his funneling of taxpayer money to his clients and himself. (Redden’s article is no longer on line but you can read it here.) While Goldschmidt’s rape of a teenage girl was shocking, Redden’s revelations had greater long-term implications for Portland and Oregon, showing that they were still being run by a cabal that did not have the voters’ best interests at heart.
Ironically, the Portland Tribune, which had been founded in 2001 as an alternative paper to compete with the Oregonian, may have also effectively died the week before Goldschmidt when it was sold to a Mississippi newspaper chain that also recently purchased Hawaii’s largest newspaper, the largest newspaper in Juneau, Alaska, and several others. The Tribune‘s sale led to the usual fears about the death of journalism as it seemed likely that many reporters would be laid off.
Goldschmidt began his political career as an idealist and he ended up being the problem he had promised to fix. The lesson for me is not that you can’t trust people not to be selfish; instead, it is that you can trust government to serve the selfish ends of whoever is in charge. The solution is not to replace those people but to make government smaller so that it offers fewer opportunities for such corruption.
Since transit is viewed by most as an environmental, economical, social and moral public good, any attempt to decry it, curtail, shut it down is viewed as a Negative on sociological well being. Racist, sexist, anti-poor, etc.
Everyone enters politics with ideas, ambition
Only ones corrupt to begin with drag society.
More so, In long run, politicians to stay in office, rehash what they supported, even if what they supported no longer functionally logical.
The government tries to curb social ills with spending programs, if the program fails as it usually does; they do not curtail the program as inefficient and their Voter base views the “Social Good” as relevant or necessary. To another degree; the good is valid because it requires No fore thought from the individual who deems it meritous. As most Americans would rather “Have their taxes take care of it”
Back in 1958 Edward Banfield wrote his case study book “The Moral Basis of a Backward Society”
He observed a self-interested, family-centric society, which sacrificed the public good for the sake of nepotism and the immediate family. As an American, Banfield was witnessing what was to become infamous as the Southern Italian Mafias and a self-centered clan-system promoting the well-being of their inner group at the expense of the other ones.
Outside a few dense metro cities rail is effective way moving people. But status quo and nostalgia rail romanticizers placed emphasis we need rail systems everywhere.Big Contractors love heavy rail, keeps them busy for decades and You Mr. Taxpayer foot the bill. But remember you’re feeding the kids of those hard working workers building trains Nobody uses?