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.
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