Goodman led secret gay life, people who knew him say
33-year-old was seen as a rising conservative star.
In public, WASHINGTON —
Wesley Goodman was an up-and-coming conservative who championed pro-family and anti-LGBT causes and aspired to someday run for Congress.
In private, he exchanged salacious texts and emails with gay men he met on Capitol Hill, and sent sexually suggestive messages to young men he met through conservative circles who were too intimidated to publicly complain, according to three people who knew him when he worked in Washington.
Goodman’s double life ended this week when he resigned from the Ohio legislature after House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger was alerted to Goodman’s involvement in “inappropriate behavior” with a man in his state office in Columbus.
The married 33-year-old was elected to the 87th district seat in 2016 after working for the Conservative Action Project, a network of economic, social and national security conservatives. He previously worked for conservative U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, a Champaign County Republican.
Johnny Hadlock, then a staffer for another GOP congressman in Washington, said he met Goodman in 2010. Hadlock said he confided in Goodman that he was a closeted gay man and the two began exchanging text messages.
In an interview, Hadlock described the messages as sexting and gay banter, and said he engaged in phone sex with Goodman.
“Wes never sexually harassed me — we both knew what we were doing and we were both fine doing it,” Hadlock said.
Hadlock went on to work for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and now works at a D.C. nonprofit. He said he last talked with Goodman in 2014. In private Facebook messages shared with this news outlet, Goodman initiated conversation with Hadlock several times, once when he said his wife was out of town and another when he said she was asleep.
In one conversation, Goodman told Hadlock he was in his underwear. In another, he asked if Hadlock was sexually aroused. Hadlock said the two never engaged in physical sexual acts.
Another conservative with Ohio ties said that Goodman engaged in predatory behavior toward younger men after leaving Jordan’s office, sending inappropriate material and propositioning them via text message and Facebook messenger.
The conservative operative said he’d target college kids who wanted to have him as a mentor and were scared to report his sexual advances because they didn’t want to damage their own careers. A former co-worker shared screenshots of messages Goodman sent him that the operative likened to the lewd texts that derailed the congressional career of New York’s Anthony Weiner.
“It was suggestive ‘I am here in my underwear’ kinds of stuff,” the longtime GOP operative recalled.
Goodman was seen as a rising conservative star and a good networker who could help young people get jobs in conservative organizations, the Republican activist said.
“People never really wanted to come forward against someone in power,” the operative added.
On Friday, The Washington Post published an account that described a 2015 incident where Goodman was accused of inviting the teenage son of a Republican donor to his bedroom in a Ritz Carlton hotel. The young man awoke in the middle of the night to find Goodman pulling down the zipper of his pants, and ran from the room in a panic at around 4 a.m., according to the account in the Post.
Another former GOP congressional staffer, Chris Donnelly, said that Goodman replied to a Craigslist post on a board for men seeking men, and the two had a sexual encounter in 2008. In a response shown to cleveland.com, an email account using the name Brady Murphey described himself as a “straight/curious” guy who needed to be discreet.
Donnelly said Goodman was “all over Craigslist” and responded to several ads posted by Donnelly and other gay men.