Former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s ex-wife today said she was “stunned” to learn he had been arrested for assaulting his current wife — and revealed “he called me and apologized” for not telling her earlier about the July bust that led to his abrupt resignation.
“This is not who Steve is,” said Melissa Martin, Goldsmith’s first wife, in an interview with The Post at her Indianapolis home. “I’m stunned.”
“When he quit, I knew Mayor Bloomberg was impressed with Steve so I figured he must have had something better going on. This is not what I expected.”
“I feel so sad for him,” said Martin, who was divorced from Goldsmith in 1987, after they had adopted two children, Reid and Elizabeth.”The kids are upset because this [the allegations again him] isn’t true. It seems so out of left field.”
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“It sounds like a normal family argument that got out of hand,” Martin said. “It makes me very sad because he’s devoted his entire life to public service and for him to be portrayed this way is just wrong.”
“I’ve known Steve since we were in grade school and he’s so measured. He’s not one of those people who even spurts out a sentence without thinking about it.”
Asked if Goldsmith had ever gotten violent with her, Martin firmly replied, “Never.”
“We divorced because we lost a child. I had 11 miscarriages and people don’t grieve the same,” she said.
Martin — like most of the rest of the world — only learned yesterday that the 64-year-old Goldsmith had been busted in Washington, DC, on July 30 after allegedly assaulting his current wife Margaret, an Indiana newspaper heiress who is a cousin to Dan Quayle. Goldsmith, according to a police report, shoved his wife into a kitchen counter, smashed a phone and grabbed her when she tried to call cops in their ritzy Georgetown home.
Margaret, 59, had allegedly enraged him by yelling at him, “I should have put a bullet through you years ago!” the police report said.
The Post exclusively revealed the arrest, the fact that Goldsmith spent two nights in jail, and that his resignation Aug. 4 was directly spurred by the shameful incident, and his desire not to be “a distraction” to Mayor Bloomberg. Prosecutors in DC declined to press charges against Goldsmith after Margaret said she did not want him prosecuted.
Margaret now denies that any violence occurred, and claims cops mischaracterized the incident in their report.
Bloomberg did not publicly disclose the arrest, Goldsmith’s jailing or the fact that he was resigning over both last month. Instead, the mayor allowed officials to claim that Goldsmith was leaving to pursue opportunities in the private sector.
Goldsmith is a former mayor of Indianapolis, a former domestic adviser to President George W. Bush, and currently is on the faculty of both Columbia University, where he is teaching a class this semester, and of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
After The Post story appeared, Goldsmith “called me and apologized he hadn’t called me earlier,” Martin said. “He said there had been an incident and he had told the kids.”
In addition to his adopted children with Martin, Goldsmith has a daughter with his current wife Margaret, who herself has a son from her first marriage. Margaret has long suffered from the debilitating disease lupus.
“Domestic violence was not an issue,” Martin said of her marriage with Goldsmith. He’s a great public servant and cares more than anyone about what he does,” Martin said.
“”I’m the first wife, she’s the second so I don’t want to say much. They’ve been married longer than we were,” Martin said.
“But the separation is hard. He’s been in New York, she’s been in Georgetown, it’s like being married to a minister or doctor. I know she has been sick a very long time and it’s hard on them. And they had the stress of trying to sell their house. There’s been a lot going on.”