Agran Slush Fund Tied to Great Park
Contractors Donated to Beth Krom,
Sukhee Kang Campaigns
By Stephen C. Smith
Irvine Tattler Publisher
Posted February 25, 2008
A political slush fund connected to Irvine City Councilman and Great Park Corp. chairman Larry Agran accepted $65,000 during the
2006 municipal election from actual or potential Great Park contractors. The fund paid for campaign slate mailers supporting
Agran's political allies, including Mayor Beth Krom and Councilman Sukhee Kang.
Called Planning 2020 Inc., the fund lists as its principal officer Frank Lunding, according to
a document filed with the California Secretary of State.
Lunding is a Monterrey lawyer who Agran once appointed to the city's Transportation Commission. The document lists Renita Lloyd-Smith
as its treasurer. Lloyd-Smith lists Agran as a client and a reference in the consultant directory on the
web site of the National Women's Political Caucus of California. She was also listed as campaign treasurer on documents filed by
Krom and Kang.
The analysis is based upon public documents filed with the California Secretary of State. The documents are available through
the state's Cal-Access campaign
finance web site. The donors were researched in the City of Irvine's online
Quick Records site.
Some of the donors were budgeted to receive Great Park contracts less than two months after the November 7, 2006 municipal
election. Krom and Kang were re-elected to office, while Krom's planning commissioner Mary Ann Gaido was defeated in her bid for a City Council
seat. All three were promoted by the slate mailers funded by the donations.
Agran was not on the ballot as he was in the second year of his four-year term.
The Great Park contractors who contributed to the slush fund are:
- Gafcon Inc., a partner in the Great Park Design Studio with architect Ken Smith, donated $20,000 on November 15, 2006. One
month later, $323,000 was budgeted to pay Gafcon for the
balloon park project.
- Fuscoe Engineering, the project's civil engineer, donated $7,000 on November 7, 2006. One month later,
Fuscoe was budgeted to receive $202,000 for the balloon project.
- Griffin Structures donated $10,000 on October 6, 2006. Two months later,
the Great Park budget was increased $200,000 to pay Griffin for work on the proposed sports park.
- Three Great Park Design Studio sub-consultants — M.E. Nollkamper, Lawson Geotechnical Consulting, and LSA Associates — donated $1,000 each.
Each was budgeted to receive contracts between $40,000 to $132,000 for various projects.
Sub-consultant contracts are not available to the public as they are hired by the Design Studio.
Firms seeking recycling or trash hauling contracts at the Great Park also donated to the fund:
Planning 2020 received $350,000 from contributors during the 2006 election, many of whom had connections to the Great Park or
development projects pending approval before the Irvine City Council.
Maguire Properties, the owner of the Park Place development at Jamboree and the 405 Freeway, donated $120,000. Maguire was
negotiating a revision of its development agreement with the city at the time of the donations. KB Home Coastal, another developer
in the Irvine Business Complex, donated $50,000. Main Street LLC, another IBC developer, contributed $7,500.
R.J. Brandes, who sought an equestrian center at the Great Park, donated $10,000.
Brandes was recently sued by Irvine Company heiress Joan Irvine Smith, who alleged that Brandes had diverted $6 million from their
equestrian partnership to other unauthorized ventures. Brandes contributed $25,000 in 2002 to another slush fund connected to Agran called OC Voters for Good Government, which also paid for Agran
slate mailers when Agran was running for re-election as mayor.
Anne Earhart, the granddaughter of oil magnate John Paul Getty, donated $95,500. Named to Forbes' list of 400 richest Americans in
2004, Earhart is a frequent donor to
Democratic candidates and to environmental causes. According to a September 2007
article in the Orange County Business Journal, her Marisla Foundation is a major contribution to the
Great Park Conservancy, a non-profit organization that Agran helped found in 2001.
Planning 2020 paid $313,000 in 2006 to Hometown Voter Guide,
a slate mailer business once owned by Agran political ally Ed Dornan. Dornan
died in December 2005, but the Guide continued to operate. During the 2006 election, the Guide mailed
at least six slate mailers to Irvine voters that falsely claimed Irvine councilwoman Christina Shea opposed the Great Park
and was employed as a lobbyist.
Click here for more information about Hometown Voter Guide, the 2006 election,
and slate mailers falsely accusing Shea.
Frank Lunding, the listed principal officer of Planning 2020, has a long association with Agran.
City records that On August 23, 1988, then-Mayor Agran directed the City
Manager to hire Lunding to represent councilman Cameron Cosgrove in a legal dispute. Lunding represented Cosgrove in a dispute
about his legal status on the Council. Lunding was also appointed by Agran to the city's Transportation Commission in November 1987.
Lunding's name later resurfaced in a scandal involving Agran, Dornan and the November 2004 mayoral election.
According to an April 12, 2005 article in
the Orange County Register, Agran and Dornan were involved with lobbyist Frank Michelena to run a stealth
Republican candidate named Earle Zucht in the hope that he would siphon votes away from Mike Ward and therefore give the
election to Agran ally Beth Krom. According to the Register:
The first reported donor to Zucht's campaign was Corona del Mar attorney Franklin Lunding, who gave the
maximum — $360. Lunding received a $842 legal fee from Dornan's Hometown Voter Guide. He said he has been friends with
Agran since the 1980s and gave money to Krom and Agran last year.
Besides giving to Zucht, Lunding gave money to Krom. It's unusual for someone to endorse a high-profile candidate from one
party and a long-shot from another party.
"I want to encourage everybody," he said. "I can imagine why some people might say (Zucht was a decoy), but that's not why I gave."
State records show that Planning 2020 in the last half of 2006 contributed $34,000 to Common Sense Voter Guide, the slate
mailer that flooded the city during the 2004 elections with campaign literature touting Zucht. $17,000 was donated in Septmber 2006, and
another $17,000 in December 2006. The fund also received payments of $1,500 each from Krom, Kang and Gaido in September
2006. During the second half of 2006, Common Sense paid $38,000 to Kenny the Printer, the company used by Hometown to print
its slate mailers, and which also periodically rents Agran office space.
