User:Mark Brick/Arnold Steinberg

Arnold Steinberg is a political strategist and analyst, public affairs and litigation consultant, pollster, political media producer and director, and author and columnist.

STRATEGIC AND MEDIA CONSULTANT. As President of Arnold Steinberg and Associates, Inc., Steinberg has provided strategic and media counsel and quantitative and qualitative research. Mr. Steinberg created, produced, wrote and directed television and radio spots for political campaigns. He is an expert in virtually every phase of election politics. With F. Clifton White, Steinberg helped organize the classic Buckley for Senator campaign in New York State (1970) and served as consultant and strategist for successful campaigns in subsequent decades. During the last fifteen years, Mr. Steinberg has consulted selectively. He consulted with Richard Riordan in the two years (1991-1993)before Riordan's first election for Mayor of Los Angeles. Steinberg also served as the strategist and general and media consultant for the California Civil Rights Initiative, which became the political campaign for Proposition 209 (1996). Steinberg also created an innovative 501c(3) educational campaign in the State of Washington to explain to voters the I-200 ballot measure (1998), which closely resembled California’s Proposition 209. Steinberg’s educational television and radio spots provided the basis for I-200’s victory. He explained his approach in an article in Philanthropy Magazine. He consulted with Mayor Riordan during his two terms of office on a wide variety of projects. Steinberg created the Mayor’s television advertising as an independent expenditure in support of Proposition 227 (1998) to end California’s failed bilingual education system, which was not teaching students English. He provided strategic guidance and survey research that resulted in electing a four person majority on the Los Angeles School Board and the historic passage of Charter Measure One (1999), a new charter for the City of Los Angeles. Mr. Steinberg provided strategy for the development of the “Project E” 501c3 nonprofit educational effort in Indiana to mobilize citizens to improve public education, which featured a $2 million ad campaign (2000) that Steinberg created.

STRATEGIC RESEARCH. Mr. Steinberg has produced more than 1800 quantitative and qualitative research projects involving more than one million interviews -- for clients in public policy, politics, campaigns, and in the corporate and legal sector.

POLITICAL RESEARCH. Mr. Steinberg began his survey business in 1979, while still serving as a management consultant for political campaigns. The firm's clients for its projects -- major benchmark studies and quick tracking studies - have included local governments, elected officials, candidates at all levels,  the Republican National Committee,  California Republican Party, and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC),  In addition, the California Republican Legislative Leadership repeatedly selected the firm, in the 1980s and 1990s, as its principal survey research and polling firm.

COMMERCIAL RESEARCH. Steinberg's past survey work and attitudinal studies included many statewide and local ballot measures, such as environmental, land use, zoning, density, housing and rent control. Commercial clients have included Hollywood Park, Home Savings, House of Blues, Howard Hughes Properties, The Irvine Company, Lear Siegler, Peat-Marwick-Mitchell, Rockwell International, The Trump Organization, Warner Brothers, as well as major insurance companies, law firms, trade groups, government agencies, and major builders and developers.

LEGAL RESEARCH. Mr. Steinberg has been involved in dozens of survey research or focus group projects for major law firms, corporations, and insurance companies in connection with product liability litigation, product infringement, product liability, medical malpractice, employment law. He has counseled attorneys to evaluate survey research material presented in litigation and to assist them in cross-examination. His evaluation of survey findings for Amoco Oil, Canada, Ltd., relating to the perceived effects of a major oil well blowout and hydrogen sulfide gas leakage on the health of local residents, was introduced as evidence before regulatory agencies in Canada. He has testified numerous times as an expert witness in depositions and in declarations:  before the Los Angeles Superior Court in civil litigation (Raich v. Wilcopy;  Zinzun v. Los Angeles; Donner v. LAUSD, Juliano v. LBUSD, Olson v. Auto Club)  and before a Federal Administrative Law Hearing on hiring standards relating to national security, and in other jurisdictions, from Orange County Superior Court to arbitration in the District of Columbia. In the Rodney King case, he testified as an expert witness to measure the impact of publicity on possible juror selection. The firm's focus group research has been used for both Superior Court and Federal civil juries and was used in behalf of plaintiff's attorneys in phase one (determination of liability) in the lead case for the Malibu "Big Rock" landslide litigation ($90 million). His survey research has been used to provide guidance for jury selection and strategy, for example, for plaintiffs in the Pacific Palisades homeowners suit against State Farm Insurance ($26.8 million).

ENVIRONMENTAL/HEALTH RESEARCH. Steinberg has conducted studies on health issues and related epidemiology, and also the effects of media coverage on subjective symptoms. He has conducted studies on hospital governance, hospital ownership, and related election and bond measures. He helped design a unique study to create an economic demand curve for reducing airport noise.

PUBLIC SERVICE. Steinberg was appointed by President Reagan and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve on the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS). President Reagan nominated Steinberg a second time in 1988, when he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve a full four-year term on NIBS. In 1996, then California Republican State Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle appointed Steinberg to serve on the California Coastal Commission, where he quickly became the leading voice to protect property rights. Mr. Steinberg was appointed and successively reappointed (2003-2009) to the Board of Visitors of the National Defense University and was approved for a top secret security clearance. He served two terms through 2009 as a Member of the Los Angeles County Information Systems Commission.

APPEARANCES: Mr. Steinberg has spoken, as a lecturer, seminar participant, panelist, debater, or banquet speaker, before academic, professional, community, business, military, political, and service groups. His surveys and his analysis of opinion trends have been reported or quoted frequently in newspapers, on radio, and television, and he often has been interviewed on Cable News Network (CNN), Fox News, and on network and local television and radio. For 15 years, he served as a regular panelist for Adelphia Cable, first on the Southern California “Week in Review” and then on the national “Beyond the Beltway” show. He has served often as a news and political analyst for Fox/11 news and has been regularly interviewed on radio programs, such as San Francisco’s KSFO-AM morning program, the Los Angeles KABC morning program, as well as Los Angeles public radio programs such as Warren Olney’s “Which Way L.A.?” and Larry Mantle’s “Airtalk.” A former debate team captain, Steinberg debated major leftist figures in the 1960s, including Carl Oglesby, founder of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and Communist youth leader Bettina Aptheker. During that era, he spoke on campuses throughout the nation, as well as before the National Press Club, and appeared on many television and radio programs. He served as a student interview panelist (interviewing Walter Lippmann and Dean Acheson)in programs produced by Fred Friendly for the Public Broadcasting Laboratory (PBL), the predecessor to contemporary public broadcasting.

PUBLICATIONS. Prior to specializing in public opinion polling and analysis, Steinberg was active in virtually every phase of political campaigning. He authored two graduate level textbooks: Political Campaign Management:  A Systems Approach and The Political Campaign Handbook:  Media, Scheduling, and Advance (both published by D.C. Heath/ Lexington Books in 1976). The former emphasized systematic and quantitative approaches to political campaign management; the latter emphasized media applications, within a marketing context. The books were used at the graduate level at major universities such as Harvard and Yale. Steinberg has been asked, as an expert witness, to evaluate and analyze the effects of news media coverage and media advertising on attitudinal formation and shifts in public opinion. Besides his two books (which did for politics, according to reviewer Bill Gavin, "what Masters and Johnson have done for sex"), Steinberg has written for many publications, including professional journals like Public Opinion, and political commentary periodicals, and newspapers, such as The American Spectator (then The Alternative), Los Angeles Daily News, Human Events, The Jewish Journal, Investors Business Daily, Los Angeles Times, National Review, Reason,  the Indianapolis Star, National Review Online, the Orange County Register, Philanthropy Magazine, the Sacramento Bee,  San Diego Union, Sacramento Union Online and the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle,  the Washington Times, The Weekly Standard and The World and I magazines. In the 60s, he wrote for the international magazine of the U.S. Information Agency. As an undergraduate at UCLA (1965-1967), he wrote a regular column for the Daily Bruin. He later wrote a contributing chapter for the book Youth Manifesto (Macmillan, 1970). He has been widely interviewed for other publications and books (for example, in Bernard H. Siegan's Economic Liberties and the Constitution, University of Chicago Press). In past years, he had "ghostwritten" articles, for elected officials and for other clients, which appeared in major publications such as the Washington Post and Newsweek. He wrote regular political analysis commentary under his own name for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Daily News. From 1967 to 1969, Steinberg served as editor of The New Guard, then the monthly, national magazine of Young Americans for Freedom. Just before his editorship, he served as an editorial intern for the Washington-based publication, Human Events (Summer, 1967).

EDUCATION. A native of California, Steinberg attended UCLA (1965-1967) and graduated from George Washington University, Washington, D.C. (1969) with a bachelor's degree in public affairs, specializing in economics. As a student at GWU, Steinberg received a communications scholarship from the Jefferson Foundation. While consulting (1974-75) for Pepperdine University and its President, William S. Banowsky, and serving as a consultant to the university's (then) Center for International Business, Steinberg received a master's degree in business administration (MBA), with a grade of "A" in all courses. An honor graduate of the Pentagon's Defense Information School (Ft. Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, 1970), Steinberg  has conducted many seminars, and often lectured, on media.

ACTIVITIES AND PUBLIC SERVICE. Mr. Steinberg has served as a host, in behalf of the Department of State and the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL), to foreign government delegations visiting Los Angeles, including delegations from Australia, Japan, Mexico, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. He was appointed a member of the U.S. Information-Agency-sponsored delegation of the American Council of Young Political Leaders to the Soviet Union (1979) and also served as a delegate to the Mideast (1981), including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt. As a Member of the Board of Visitors of the National Defense University, Steinberg, as part of NDU’s Capstone program, in 2004 visited the Pacific Theater Group -- Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Indonesia – and in 2005 visited SOCOM – Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, and Nicaragua; in 2006, he visited EUCOM, including Germany, Poland, Kosovo, Rumania, and NATO and the European Union. Also, in 2006, he visited Honduras, prior to his visit to Joint Task Force Guantanamo. While in college, he was active, and held office, in many organizations, such as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), the Young Republicans, and the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). He co-founded, and served as a board member of, VIVA, which sponsored the national POW/MIA bracelets program. In the early 1970s, he served on the Board of Trustees of the Robert M. Schuchman Memorial Foundation, which later evolved into the Heritage Foundation. In the 1970s and 80s, he served on the Board of Directors of the Committee to Conserve Chinese Culture. Mr. Steinberg served as a public information specialist for the California National Guard (1969-70), District of Columbia National Guard (1970-74), and U.S. Coast Guard Reserve, California (1974-77). His public information responsibilities and intelligence responsibilities included civil disturbances and creation of recruitment television and radio spots. As a staff member at the U.S. Senate (1971-1973), he worked with officials of the U.S. Information Agency and the Voice of America to develop more effective programming to Soviet dissidents and Soviet Jewry. On Sen. Buckley’s staff, Steinberg was expert on many issues, including the transition toward a volunteer military. Steinberg served for twenty four years on the Board of Directors of the Washington, D.C.-based Fund for American Studies (formerly the Charles Edison Memorial Youth Fund), which honored him in 2007 with its David R. Jones Lifetime Service Award. He chaired the Fund's annual journalism conferences in the 1970s and 80s and then chaired its task force to create the Institute for American Political Journalism, an annual summer program at Georgetown University. Well acquainted with the workings of Capitol Hill, Steinberg served as Special Assistant to U.S. Senator James L. Buckley (New York) from 1971 to 1973. In late 1973, at the age of 26, he was asked by Senator Buckley to oversee all political, policy, and legislative matters, but he opted to return to his native Southern California.

LAND USE, REAL ESTATE. Steinberg was appointed and reappointed by President Ronald Reagan, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, to the Board of the National Institutes of Building Sciences. He also served on the California Coastal Commission. He pioneered in public policy research relating to the use of the initiative process in land use. He provided advice many times in preparing litigation involving eminent domain and inverse condemnation. He is licensed by the State of California in real estate sales.

PERSONAL. He and his wife, Robin, have two children – Julia and Aaron. Robin is a musical composer, painter, and sculptor.