Peter D. Hannaford, public relations consultant, died at 82

  Dead Famous

Peter Dor Hannaford, born on September 21, 1932 and died September 5, 2015.

He was an American business consultant and author who was a political consultant to California Governor and U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan.

A native of Glendale, California, Hannaford in 1954 graduated with a degree in English from the University of California at Berkeley.

From 1954 to 1956, he was a first lieutenant in the United States Army Signal Corps.

After his military tour of duty, he joined the company of Helen Kennedy, already an established figure in the public relations business in San Francisco and Oakland.

In subsequently years he was affiliated with several other public relations firms.

From 1969 to 1972, he was vice president of Wilton, Coombs & Colnett, Inc. He died on September 5, 2015.

Hannaford cast his first presidential vote in 1956 for Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson, II, of Illinois, whose rhetoric and English diction greatly impressed him.

Two years later, Hannaford re-registered as a Republican, but 1958 was one of the worst years in history for the GOP in California and nationally as well.

The party lost one of its two U.S. Senate seats and the governorship, when Governor Goodwin J. Knight and Senator William F. Knowland tried to switch offices.

In 1960, Hannaford volunteered to work on the Republican phone bank to get out the vote for presidential nominee Richard M. Nixon, whom he had voted against as vice president four years earlier.

In 1964, Hannaford supported Barry M. Goldwater over the Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller in the showdown California presidential primary.

In the 1966 Republican gubernatorial primary, Hannaford supported not Goldwater’s heir apparent, Reagan, but Moderate Republican former San Francisco Mayor George Christopher, the last Republican thus far to have held that particular office since January 1964.

Hannaford quickly switched to Reagan in the general election against Governor Edmund G. Brown, Sr., and thereafter stood with the conservative faction of the party.

Peter D. Hannaford died September 5, 2015 at age 82.