Neil E. Goldschmidt (1940- ) is an American politician. A native of Eugene, Oregon, Goldschmidt completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Oregon in 1963, and he received a law degree in 1967 from Boalt Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1964 he performed voter registration work in Mississippi as part of the Freedom Summer campaign. After graduating from law school, Goldschmidt worked as a legal aid attorney in Portland for several years, before being elected city commissioner and later mayor of Portland. Goldschmidt served as mayor of Portland until 1979, when President Jimmy Carter appointed him Secretary of Transportation. In 1986 Goldschmidt was elected governor of Oregon. In 2004 the Willamette Weekly, a Portland newspaper, broke a story in which it contended that Goldschmidt, while mayor of Portland, engaged in a sexual relationship with a 14 year-old babysitter. The newspaper won a 2005 Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism for its coverage of the story.

Image of Neil Goldschmidt is courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society.