Cry, Beloved Oregon

What has the state learned from the legacy of Neil Goldschmidt?

Now that he’s dead, perhaps it’s time to bring disgraced Gov. Neil Goldschmidt’s portrait out of a Gresham warehouse and hang it in the state Capitol with the other governors.

It would be a constant reminder: This is what happens when you hide the truth. 

This is what happens when you cling to a political savior. 

This is what happens when you encourage an underage girl to wallow in self-destruction after she enters adulthood — just because a powerful man did her wrong.

When Goldschmidt died last week on the cusp of his 84th birthday, the final pile-on commenced.

Nobody wanted to claim his friendship. Everybody felt sorry for Elizabeth Dunham, the 14-year-old girl he seduced and sexually exploited. Nobody considered her anything but a victim, whose entire worth was wrapped up in her youthful sexuality that Goldschmidt eventually discarded.

Upon his death there was a rush to finally wash Oregon’s hands of Goldschmidt. No need to keep wondering who knew what when.

Did then-Portland City Commissioner Earl Blumenauer (D-Portland) suspect anything when then-Mayor Goldschmidt showed up at his house in the company of a teenage girl? (Did Blumenauer, now a Congressman, give him a private attaboy?)

With Goldschmidt dead and gone, it’s easy for U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon/New York) to declare that the name of the former Portland mayor and Oregon governor is moot. What of former Presidents Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy? Given their sexual proclivities, it’s hard to believe they always checked IDs before their assignations.

What of those good Oregonians who are sorry Goldschmidt wasn’t caught before the statute of limitations on rape ran out so he could be sent to prison?

There is no guarantee he would have ever been convicted. (Despite well-publicized sexual assault charges against actor Kevin Spacey, he was acquitted of multiple charges — including one involving an actor who alleged that Spacey sexually assaulted him when he was 14.)

Legally, the definition of statutory rape seems cut-and-dried. With or without consent, it is against the law for an adult to have sex with a minor under 16 — it’s  second-degree rape. Under age 12, it’s first-degree rape.

Juries don’t always see it that way. Rape conjures an image of force. To call Goldschmidt a rapist is to rob Dunham of all agency, as if she had no judgment and was utterly helpless.

If age alone can qualify a girl for victim status, how do we take into consideration that often the first power females experience is sexual power. They discover the truth of a very old saying, “Men think with their dicks.” A teenage girl can make a fool of a man who should know better.

The evidence shows Dunham boasted to classmates of her relationship with Goldschmidt. Perhaps she had a crush. Certainly females older and wiser than Dunham had sexual encounters with Goldschmidt. Like Henry Kissinger said, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Dunham likely would not have bragged of a sexual relationship with a St. Mary’s Academy janitor anymore than Monica Lewinsky would have gone down on her knees for a White House janitor.

The only person in this degrading political-sexual soap opera who deserved what he got was Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week, who won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing Goldschmidt’s sexual history with the underage Dunham.

But even Jaquiss has acknowledged that the only two people who know the full story of what happened between them are Goldschmidt and Dunham.

Can a 14-year-old girl be in love with a man old enough to be her father? Yes, especially if her father appeared to be out of the loop, as Dr. Arlyss Dunham, a Portland dentist seemed to be.

What kind of promises did Goldschmidt make to Elizabeth Dunham? Did he plant visions of her being his First Lady someday? Is that why she lost interest in school — her future was set, and it was bigger than anything St. Mary’s Academy had to offer.

Then there was the context of the times. It was the mid-70’s with the sexual revolution still in bloom. One of the big best-sellers was Erica Jong’s “Fear of Flying.” How many men, women — and teenagers — were chasing the zipless fuck? No commitment necessary.

Did Elizabeth Dunham’s mother, Pamela Dunham, embrace the progressive politics of the day by being her daughter’s best friend instead of parent? From all that has been written in the past two decades, it appears the elder Dunham — a Goldschmidt true believer who worked for him when he was Portland mayor — knew of the sexual relationship. Did she give Elizabeth an attagirl?

If so, that would have made Goldschmidt’s ultimate rejection of the young woman even harder to endure. While Elizabeth Dunham’s adult life was disintegrating in alcohol and drugs, her mother was pursuing a Foreign Service career that took her to postings in Rome and other places.

In 1994 — the year Goldschmidt signed a settlement agreement for roughly $350,000 to financially support Dunham — she was 33, no longer a fresh young thing. It was also the year Goldschmidt married Diana Snowden. Whatever dreams Dunham may have clung to, his new marriage may have finally awakened something else in her. She decided to hire an attorney. As a condition of the settlement, Dunham signed a confidentiality clause. She would stop talking about the sex she had with Goldschmidt.

In later interviews with Willamette Week and The Oregonian’s Margie Boule, Dunham liked to reminisce about what she admired in Goldschmidt. He gave her reading lists and a book that would become one of her favorites — “Cry, the Beloved Country” by Alan Paton.

The acclaimed novel is about pre-apartheid South Africa and follows the story of a  Zulu minister who leaves his village to search for a brother, sister and son who have been swallowed up by the slums of Johannesburg. He discovers his brother is now a belligerent troublemaker, his sister is a prostitute, and his son has murdered a respected white man.

The minister hears voices “crying what must be done, a hundred, a thousand voices. But what do they help if one seeks for counsel, for one cries this and one cries that, and another cries something that is neither this nor that.”

While “Cry, the Beloved Country” may have been one of her favorite books, did Dunham learn nothing of what true misery and suffering look like? There are far worse injustices in the world than getting used and jilted by Neil Goldschmidt.

Dunham might have revisited some favorite quotes from the book: “The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”

The shortcoming of that quote is what follows: “But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love.”

In Dunham’s case, love fell short.

Where were the people who could’ve helped mend her?

In Portland she would have been surrounded by two tribes: The Goldschmidt worshippers who thought his progressive gifts to the city were worth his flaws. Or, those who let Dunham be consumed by victimhood, who let her believe Goldschmidt had indeed “wasted” her life.

Willamette Week gave her a voice, but only under the fake name “Susan.” The Oregonian’s Margie Boule offered a sympathetic shoulder to cry on and not much else. Boule’s story doesn’t name Dunham, as if the mere act of having teenage sex with Goldschmidt was shameful. Even then, the paper didn’t run Boule’s column until after Dunham was dead.

The Portland media were still adhering to the long-accepted belief that rape victims must remain anonymous to spare them shame.

The real shame rested with Goldschmidt’s behavior. The Oregonian offered a shallow apology after his death and acknowledged their poor performance in covering one of the state’s biggest scandals.

It was a scandal that could have changed the course of this state had it been exposed.

When Goldschmidt ran for governor, he wasn’t considered a shoo-in. The Republicans ran Norma Paulus, the Secretary of State who stood up to the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian guru who had founded a commune in Wasco County. His followers brought thousands of homeless people in via busload, to inflate the election rolls and take over county government. Paulus stopped the fraud. She was tough. She was also a moderate, pro-choice Republican in the style of Tom McCall.

Goldschmidt was younger, flashier and having served as President Jimmy Carter’s Transportation Secretary, he had the kind of national profile that Portlanders, in particular, crave.

Had Goldschmidt’s sexual abuse been reported, and had it followed the proper legal channels, he likely would have never been governor. But his election set the stage for the one-party state we now have.

When the truth finally came out, Goldschmidt ceased being a political savior — at least publicly. He still had influence behind the scenes.

What is it about Oregon and its largest city, Portland, that cling to larger-than-life personages as symbols for the rest of us.

When former Trail Blazer Bill Walton recently died, a collective mourning suggested that Portland had lost part of its identity. Same when Damian Lillard decamped to Milwaukee.

Who will Oregon’s next political savior be? New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is getting a head start. He’s a former candidate for Oregon governor. Check out one of his latest columns in the Times, “What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast?”

It wouldn’t be surprising if Gov. Tina Kotek (D) and her staff took note — and started digging around for sexual dirt in case of a primary challenge.

Did Kristof ever kiss someone underage? What about all those countries he visited for his book “Half the Sky,” where young females (and males) are readily available. Did he always keep his hands to himself?

In Salem, the hunt is on. Who will the next Elizabeth Dunham be?