Howard Forman had a heart as big as Broward | Steve Bousquet
Broward County was changing very quickly and dramatically in the 1970s, and a young Howard Forman helped to lead the way.
At 27, he won a city commission seat in Hallandale, of all places, where the average age was closer to 77. He didn’t stay there long.
At 30, he loosened the Republican grip on county government by winning a four-year term on the County Commission. In 1976, Forman defeated a deeply entrenched Bob Barkelew, who complained that he had been done in by a “straight Democratic bloc vote.”
Forman, who died Thursday at age 77 after a long illness, served 12 years on the County Commission, followed by another decade as a state senator, followed by 16 years as Broward’s elected court clerk.
He never lost an election, and few politicians in Broward’s history were such a fixture for as long. During his tenure, believe it or not, a marketing firm tried to attract tourists with a little character called “Howard from Broward.” The idea soon went away. The real Howard didn’t.
His political rise paralleled the retirement condo boom that transformed Broward into a Democratic bastion seemingly overnight.
Farms and fields gave way to Century Village, Sunrise Lakes, Pine Island Ridge and Hawaiian Gardens, luring hundreds of thousands of Rust Belt residents, many liberal and Jewish, as was Forman, who was born in Pittsburgh.
He was a fervent and compassionate supporter of the environment, consumer protections, human services and stricter gun laws. He saw how rampant overdevelopment strained limited public services and led to snarled highways and a diminished quality of life.
He championed a 1984 countywide vote for a mandatory 10-day waiting period to buy a handgun, despite fierce opposition from several cities, led by Fort Lauderdale.
The referendum passed with 62% of the vote — another sign of the power of that bloc vote. But to be sure, Forman and his fellow Democrats put the question on a March presidential primary election the year President Ronald Reagan ran unopposed for re-election, ensuring a lopsidedly liberal turnout.
“We frequently had disagreements, but he was a worthy adversary,” said Jack Moss, a Republican county commissioner at the time who remained friends with Forman nearly until the end. “He had a lot of do-gooder ideas that were frequently impractical, but he was always well-intentioned about it.”
Back then, Broward had a problem with trains stopping at street crossings, causing traffic tie-ups. So Forman filed an ordinance allowing police to issue tickets to engineers for stopping. When Moss reminded Forman how that would likely make things worse, commissioners rejected the idea.
Forman was always accessible, quotable and transparent. There was nothing sly or devious about him. When he returned a reporter’s call, it was in a distinctive high-pitched, lilting voice. “Steve?” he would say, introducing himself as “Howard Forman.”
A natural campaigner, he seemed to know everyone by name, and he remembered them all.
As a state senator, he saw too much suffering in a state too indifferent to poverty and sickness. He had trouble saying no to anyone who wanted help or money from the state.
“Go see Howard” became the mantra in Tallahassee at a time when the Democrats’ power was slipping away at the Capitol.
It was not unusual for him to file 60 or 70 bills a year, which kept his long-time aide, Joan Glickman, working the phones and pushing so much paper she was known as “the 41st senator.”
So, when the Legislature late one night in 1994 used subterfuge to pass a landmark law allowing the state to sue tobacco companies to recover the costs of treating smokers, it naturally was as an amendment to a bill sponsored by Howard Forman.
One of the great small-world coincidences in South Florida political history is the story of three neighborhood kids who grew up in Miami Beach. They played chess together, attended Nautilus Junior High together and in the ’80s, served on the Broward County Commission together: Forman, Scott Cowan and Nicki Grossman.
“He voted with his heart and he spoke from his heart,” Grossman said of Forman, her colleague and lifelong friend. “Everything he did, he did from the heart. I never questioned what motivated him.”
Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or 850-567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.
