O.C. political strategist Arnold Forde, the brains behind Great Park and Prop 13 campaigns, dies at 82

Arnold Forde, a pioneering Orange County political strategist who was the brains behind campaigns that passed Proposition 13 and created the Great Park in Irvine, died Saturday following two years of illness. He was 82.

Forde, of Laguna Beach, helped modernize political campaign strategy in the 1960s and 1970s by using polling data to target voters with direct mail, a now widely used approach that packs voters’ mailboxes each election season.

As co-founder of the consulting agencies Forde & Mollrich and Butcher and Forde, he devised political campaigns for politicians of both parties, including Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown in his successful first-term run and former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his 2006 re-election.

“He’ll be remembered as a tough competitor and a brilliant strategist,” said Stu Mollrich, Forde’s longtime business partner. “Anybody who met Arnold once always remembered him. I guess it was his Nordic background – a Viking warrior.”

Mollrich said Forde became a political consultant at a time when most campaigns were run by volunteers or legislative staffers and campaign money was spent largely on newspaper ads and billboards. To distinguish himself, Forde hired a former military employee to teach a computer to write letters to voters, programming a computer using punch cards.

In 1978, Forde’s targeted direct-mail strategy helped Proposition 13 win voter approval, cutting property taxes statewide. Afterward, Forded helped in the foundation of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a prominent nonprofit that has lobbied against legislation raising taxes.

But Forde’s fundraising for the anti-tax group later drew criticism. In 1995, an Orange County Superior Court judge said Butcher and Forde raised money for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association under false pretenses in a way that funneled $1.5 million back to the consultants, according to a Los Angeles Times story. The judge wrote that Butcher and Forde could not be held liable but said they facilitated the action, calling it “reprehensible.”

In 2002, Forde helped forever reshape Orange County by running the publicity campaign that defeated a proposal to build an international airport at the former El Toro Marine base. Forde later said it was his idea to create the Great Park on the land.

Forde’s subsequent work for the Great Park raised concerns, though. In a 2014 Irvine audit of why it cost $250 million to develop 88 of the park’s 1,300 acres, Forde’s agency’s no-bid $100,000-per-month consulting fee for the park was criticized, and former Great Park CEO Michael Ellzey alleged that Forde was de facto in control of the Great Park project. However, the California State Auditor later found the city’s audit had lacked adequate independence and transparency, and the California Accountancy Board recommended the auditors have their licenses suspended.

Mollrich credited Forde for steering the Great Park project through the Great Recession.

“The project ultimately succeeded, and I think that’s in large part because of the strategy he worked to implement,” Mollrich said.

Forde had been bed-ridden during the past two years with a degenerative neurological condition, Mollrich said.

He is survived by his wife, Marie, and sons, Kent and Kirk.