Patricia Ann Goldman (March 22, 1942 – July 26, 2023) was an American public official and women's rights advocate. She served on the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) from 1979 to 1988, most of that time as vice chair.
An alumna of Goucher College, Goldman began her career in 1964 as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill. She worked for various political organizations, directing the Wednesday Group (a group of liberal Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives) and chairing the Republican Women's Task Force of the National Women's Political Caucus. She was appointed to the NTSB by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and reappointed by Ronald Reagan in 1984.
In 1988, Goldman entered the private sector as a senior vice president for USAir. She was later president of the WISH List and the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, which she co-founded and served on the board of the Chautauqua Foundation.
Early life and education
Patricia Goldman was born in Newton, New Jersey, on March 22, 1942, to Jacob J. Goldman, a dentist, and Miriam L. ( Cassiday) Goldman, a former nurse and homemaker. Her mother was Catholic and her father Jewish; she was raised Catholic, and later converted to Judaism. She graduated from Goucher College, a women's liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland, with a bachelor's degree in economics in 1964.
Career
National politics
Goldman began working in Washington, D.C., as a research assistant for the U.S. Congress's Joint Economic Committee during her senior year at Goucher in 1964. She arrived in the capital as an independent but soon joined the Republican Party. Though she planned to spend just a year there, she later joked, "I guess you could say I caught Potomac fever." From 1965 to 1966, she was a legislative assistant for an ad hoc U.S. House subcommittee focused on the war on poverty (part of the Education and Labor Committee), hired by Representative Albert Quie as the Republican minority's lone staffer.
Goldman worked as a research consultant for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1966 and then led poverty and workforce programs for the lobbying organization from 1967 to 1971 during a period of urban riots. She provided legislative counsel to the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 1971 and 1972. She also wrote freelance for the political magazine National Journal in 1972.
Politically, Goldman became aligned with the liberal wing of the Republican Party. She labeled herself variously an independent, progressive, moderate, feminist, and "thinking person," adding, "I don't think a Republican feminist is an oxymoron." She was one of the few Republicans present at the founding meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) in 1971. In 1985, Representative Olympia Snowe called her "just a wealth of information and advice" for women in politics.
Goldman was the executive director of the U.S. House's Wednesday Group, a caucus of liberal Republicans, from 1972 to 1979, coordinating legislative efforts among its 31 members. She was also a board member of the Ripon Society, a liberal Republican think tank. As the chair of the Republican Women's Task Force of the NWPC, at the 1976 Republican National Convention she helped secure the continued endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment and tried to prevent the party platform from opposing Roe v. Wade. She held teaching positions as a fellow at the Institute of Politics in Harvard's Kennedy School of Government; a lecturer at the Brookings Institution; and a visiting professor with the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, which sent her on visiting lectureships at universities across the country.
Transportation safety
Goldman was a member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an independent federal agency, for almost nine years. On the recommendation of Representative Barbara Mikulski and others, President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, nominated her to an open Republican seat on the board on March 16, 1979, to succeed Philip Hogue. Before her Senate confirmation, in a meeting with White House counsel Robert Lipshutz, she promised to recuse herself from potential issues involving interests of her husband, former Senator Charles Goodell, who consulted for the Concorde supersonic airliner and held stock in oil and rail. She had no prior technical knowledge but was trained on the job by staff experts.