The news last week was that The New Republic had been sold. After the magazine's turbulent tenure under Facebook mogul Chris Hughes, it was purchased by Win McCormack, an Oregon resident. At first glance this seems like a good fit. McCormack co-founded Mother Jones, another liberal publication, and has a lot of experience both in publishing and Democratic activism.
Yet McCormack has a bit of an unsavory past.
Here's the backstory: In the 1970s, Portland, Oregon, mayor Neil Goldschmidt started sleeping with his kids' babysitter. She was 14 when it started. It didn't become public, but it also wasn't a well-guarded secret. Goldschmidt took her to parties with other power brokers in the state, but no one said anything. As Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto put it, "You could argue that I had an ethical responsibility to do something." Goldschmidt went on to be Carter's secretary of transportation and was elected governor of Oregon in 1986. In 1990, Goldschmidt stunned Oregon when he announced that he wasn't running for a second term.
That Goldschmidt raped a babysitter didn't become public until 14 years later later in the wake of a scandal involving Goldschmidt and his lobbying clients, as well as some dogged Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting from Willamette Week that brought it to light. They were referred to as the "light rail mafia" because Goldschmidt was exploiting all of the transportation rules and development restrictions that he himself had put in place when he was in office. The story was that Goldschmidt's victim had threatened to go public and one of the conditions of the settlement was that he would leave public life. So he became the state's top lobbyist, not that the move would necessarily prevent him from doing less political damage. (I wrote about all of this in more detail in my dissection of Portlandia a few years ago.)
When Goldschmidt's indiscretions finally became public, Willamette Week did a big autopsy of the scandal titled, "Who Knew?" Well, Win McCormack knew:
Currently the publisher of the literary quarterly Tin House, McCormack has a lengthy journalistic background. In the '60s, he co-founded the San Francisco magazine Mother Jones, which built its reputation on investigative journalism. After moving to Portland in 1976, McCormack published the well-respected Oregon Magazine (which closed in 1988), as well as Oregon Business magazine, where he remains a board member.

In addition, McCormack has long been a large contributor to statewide and national campaigns. In October, for example, he gave what the Oregon Follow the Money Project says is the biggest single political contribution in the state's history: $1 million to America Coming Together, a Democratic get-out-the-vote operation.

McCormack told WW he learned of Goldschmidt's secret not long after the governor's surprise announcement in 1990. "The brother of a friend of mine was dating [Susan] when Goldschmidt said he wasn't going to run again," recalls McCormack. "He said, 'Let me tell you the real reason he isn't running.'"

With his journalistic experience, McCormack knew what a huge story he had been handed. Still, he chose to do nothing. "I didn't feel like it was my business, and even though I don't like Neil, I didn't want to destroy him," McCormack says.

McCormack says he never shared the secret, even though Goldschmidt's surprise decision remained perhaps the greatest mystery in Oregon politics over the past 15 years.
By the time Goldschmidt's crimes were revealed, the statute of limitations had expired so he was immune from criminal prosecution. And a parade of Oregon's most influential came to Goldschmidt's defense and predicted, correctly it turns out, that he would survive this scandal. For the full litany, read this harrowing and damning op-ed by Fred Leonhardt on what happened. Unlike the Willamette Week piece, it didn't win a Pulitizer. But it should have.
In 2008, a few years after admitting he didn't go public with his knowledge that Oregon's Democratic governor was a rapist, McCormack wrote a book a called You Don't Know Me: A Citizen's Guide to Republican Family Values. According to the cover blurb from Arianna Huffington, "Win McCormack reveals the true hypocrisy and depravity of those who love to quote the bible but act like Caligula."
In 2011, Elizabeth Lynn Dunham, Goldschmidt's teenage victim, died in hospice at age 49. She spent most of her life battling addiction and mental illness. Neil Goldschmidt is still with us. When he's not in Oregon, he lives on an estate in the South of France.
Obviously, Win McCormack wasn't solely to blame for covering up Goldschmidt's misdeeds. But had he said what he knew about Goldschmidt in 1990, maybe it could have helped. Maybe it would have stopped Goldschmidt from wreaking so much havoc in the state as a corrupt lobbyist. Maybe it would have resulted in Elizabeth Lynn Dunham finding the support she needed, but didn't have.
Or maybe it would have changed nothing. But I wish Win McCormack had done the right thing in 1990, and nothing he's done in the intervening years suggests he's a man of principle that will restore The New Republic to its former glory.