XPost: la.general, alt.politics.media, rec.arts.tv.comedy.colbert-report   
   XPost: dc.politics   
   From: ed.buck.paidoff.eric-garcetti@disney.com   
      
   In 2010, then-California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was   
   holding a political rally at a Hollywood hotel when from the   
   front row a man started heckling her.   
      
   “What are you hiding?” the man shouted at the Republican   
   candidate. “You’re looking like Arnold in a dress!” he said,   
   referring to outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.   
      
   Before Whitman could respond, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris   
   Christie, who was speaking with Whitman, stepped down from the   
   stage and pointed his finger in the man’s face, saying it was   
   “people who raise their voices and yell and scream like you that   
   are dividing this country.” The man pointed his finger right   
   back in Christie’s face.   
      
   For many people watching the episode on television, it was a   
   first glimpse, however brief, of Ed Buck, a former fashion   
   model, self-described retired multimillionaire and onetime West   
   Hollywood City Council candidate.   
      
   Now, Buck is generating notoriety of a different kind after the   
   deaths of two men in his West Hollywood apartment.   
      
   The deaths of Timothy Dean, 55, earlier this month and Gemmel   
   Moore, 26, in 2017 have prompted homicide investigations by the   
   Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Prosecutors declined to   
   press charges in the first case, but the Sheriff’s Department   
   said recently it would be reexamined after Dean’s death.   
      
   The deaths have stoked outrage and suspicion among activists and   
   the men’s family and friends, who question whether differences   
   in race, wealth and political connections have influenced the   
   investigations. Both of the dead men were black. Buck is white.   
      
   Buck’s attorney, Seymour Amster, said his client was a man with   
   a “heart of gold” who invited troubled people into his home to   
   help them. Buck is not responsible for the deaths, he said.   
      
   Buck, 64, has long been a contentious figure in West Hollywood,   
   where he was best known for his animal rights and LGBTQ activism   
   and his donations to Democratic politicians and causes.   
      
   He was an enigma to those who knew him — a man who bragged about   
   his wealth while living in a barely furnished apartment. He   
   fostered elderly dogs but was known to criticize strangers over   
   how they walked their pets.   
      
   An ‘in-your-face activist’   
      
   The son of a city sanitation worker and a secretary, Buck grew   
   up in Phoenix. His mother once told a reporter that when Buck   
   was in high school, “the dean of boys had a hot line to my phone   
   at work. I’d answer the phone and say, ‘All right, what is it   
   this time?’ ”   
      
   In his early 20s, Buck worked as a fashion model and actor in   
   Europe for several years before returning, jobless, to Arizona.   
   He worked for a friend’s business, an information service for   
   auto insurers, and became obsessed with it. He slept on a   
   mattress in the company office and eventually bought out his   
   friend. He later sold the business for what he said was a   
   “million-dollar profit,” according to the Arizona Republic, and   
   was suddenly wealthy, retired and bored at 32.   
      
   Buck became a nationally known figure in the late 1980s when he   
   led the successful effort to impeach Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham.   
   Buck, who then described himself as a conservative Republican,   
   set up shop in a downtown Phoenix office, where he hung a piñata   
   effigy of the governor, seeded the recall movement with $5,000   
   of his own money and turned it into a full-time job. Upon   
   learning Buck is gay, Mecham declared him a “militant   
   homosexual.” Buck responded: “He’s right. So what?”   
      
   During the recall effort, it was made public that Buck was   
   arrested in 1983 for public sexual indecency for grabbing the   
   crotch of another man in a bookstore. Buck pleaded guilty to   
   disturbing the peace and cracked to reporters: “What they didn’t   
   say was that the man enjoyed it.”   
      
   When Buck threatened to launch a recall effort against both of   
   Arizona’s senators, Democrat Dennis DeConcini and Republican   
   John McCain, over the Keating Five corruption scandal, he   
   printed fake $10 bills with their pictures and the words   
   “illegal tender for favoritism.” The Secret Service seized them,   
   saying they too closely resembled real currency.   
      
   Buck eventually made his way to Southern California, where,   
   court records show, he has been the subject of several requests   
   for restraining orders. Records from three cases from 2007 that   
   involved Buck were destroyed by the Los Angeles Superior Court.   
      
      
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