XPost: la.general, alt.politics.media, rec.arts.tv.comedy.colbert-report   
   XPost: dc.politics   
   From: gavin.newsom.democrat.felcher@disney.com   
      
   West Hollywood City Councilman John Duran said Ed Buck once hung   
   an effigy of him in a park.   
      
   Some municipal employees said they refused to meet alone with   
   him, and he unnerved two political foes so much at council   
   meetings that sheriff’s deputies accompanied them to their cars   
   afterward.   
      
   Still, for years, Buck was a fixture in West Hollywood, where he   
   donated to all but one of the current City Council members,   
   enmeshed himself in local activist groups and ran,   
   unsuccessfully, to be a councilman himself. In the liberal-   
   leaning city, he took on popular causes like historic   
   preservation and animal rights, which gave him more cachet.   
      
   Buck was tolerated more than beloved, said some of those who   
   took his money while looking past his caustic behavior.   
      
   That attitude has become the subject of much consternation in   
   West Hollywood and local Democratic circles after he was   
   federally charged in connection with the overdose deaths of two   
   black men in his West Hollywood apartment.   
      
   Buck’s political influence has drawn intense criticism,   
   especially from black and LGBTQ activists who believe his status   
   as a white Democratic donor initially insulated him from   
   prosecution and that influential people made excuses for a man   
   whose volatility was on public display for years.   
      
   Jasmyne Cannick, a black political consultant who pushed for   
   Buck’s prosecution, said she believed Buck got special treatment   
   because of his fundraising for local Democratic candidates, a   
   charge officials have denied.   
      
   “It’s more than race and class,” Cannick said after the second   
   death in Buck’s home in January. “It is also political. This is   
   a man protected by the Democratic Party.”   
      
   Buck’s attorney, Seymour Amster, has declined repeated requests   
   for comment. Buck has pleaded not guilty to the federal drug   
   charges.   
      
   A Times analysis of campaign finance records shows that, since   
   the mid-2000s, Buck has given more than $500,000 to political   
   candidates and causes, almost all of them linked to the   
   Democratic Party.   
      
   Forty politicians currently holding office in California have   
   received donations from Buck, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los   
   Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, L.A. County Dist. Atty. Jackie   
   Lacey and U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu and Adam B. Schiff. Some   
   politicians have returned the money.   
      
   Former West Hollywood Councilman Steve Martin said people felt   
   more comfortable criticizing Buck since his arrest. But he said   
   he found it “interesting that everybody’s anxious to say they   
   are no longer his friend” because “obviously a lot of people   
   were friends with him.”   
      
   “I think it’s kind of horrifying for people to think this is   
   somebody you knew, you might have worked with, you might have   
   gone to dinner with or gone over to his apartment, to think he’s   
   capable of these things,” said Martin, who worked closely with   
   Buck on anti-development campaigns.   
      
   Prosecutors allege Buck, 65, preyed on vulnerable gay black men   
   who were homeless, addicted to drugs or working as escorts and   
   lured them to his spartan Laurel Avenue apartment, where he   
   manipulated them into doing drugs for his sexual gratification.   
   Several men claimed Buck injected them with methamphetamine as   
   they slept, according to the federal complaint.   
      
   Buck has been federally charged with providing the meth that led   
   to the deaths of Gemmel Moore, 26, in 2017, and Timothy Dean,   
   55, in January. Prosecutors say a third black man nearly died of   
   an overdose in Buck’s home last month. The Los Angeles County   
   district attorney charged Buck with battery and operating a drug   
   den.   
      
   Duran said Buck hung the effigy in West Hollywood Park in 2005   
   and created a website called DumpDuran.com that declared the   
   politician “sold out to developers” with digitally altered   
   images of Duran’s face that had exaggerated bags under his eyes.   
      
   Back then, Buck was among a group of preservationists fighting   
   to save a 1915 Colonial-style estate nicknamed Tara for its   
   resemblance to the plantation home in “Gone With the Wind,” and   
   Duran had become the target of Buck’s wrath over his vote to   
   turn the home into a senior living complex.   
      
   “He was extremely volatile, angry, irrational, mean, a bully,   
   all those things. He was a real cyclone in the city,” Duran   
   said. “We were not friends.”   
      
   But by 2011, Buck and Duran had become allies, championing a   
   local ban on the sale of fur apparel and other causes. Over the   
   next five years, Duran accepted at least $12,500 in donations   
      
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