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ThesaurasaurusKeks ago

https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/121015602/ Arizona Republic Phoenix, Arizona Sunday, June 28, 1987 - Page 10

Bucking the system: Unlikely figure leads challenge to Mecham

Ed Buck, millionaire, self-acknowledged homosexual and registered Republican, is destined to go down in history as one of Arizona's most unlikely political figures.

Buck is the founder and prime mover of an effort aimed at mounting the first recall of an Arizona governor, Republican Evan Mecham.

And Buck, who says he has amassed the support of thousands of Arizonans disenchanted with their new chief of state, honestly believes he can do it.

"For all those people who said it can't be done," Buck said, "I point to the election of Governor Evan Mecham. Everyone said that couldn't be done."

But it happened, and Buck says he is partly to blame. He and about 170,000 others voted for Bill Schulz, whose independent candidacy is blamed by some political analysts for handing the governor's job to Mecham in his fifth bid for the post.

Born Aug. 25, 1954, in Steuhenville, Ohio -- "the same place Dean Martin was born" -- Edward Bernard Peter Buckmelter came late to politics. His parents were middle-class workers who moved to Phoenix when he was 6.

"My childhood was uneventful as hell," Buck said, stating that he graduated from North High School and Phoenix College.

In the middle and late 1970s, Buck began modeling for sportswear ads in Europe.

In 1980, after having appeared in some European television commercials and acted in two foreign films, Buck returned to Arizona. In 1981, he had his name legally changed from Buckmelter.

"I picked up mail for a business on a bicycle," Buck said, stating that he eventually bought the business and sold it for "big bucks."

The big bucks, stemming from the March 1986 sale of Rapid Information Services, which provides driver's license information to insurance companies, made him "barely more than $1 million."

**During his political adolescence, Buck was arrested in an incident that his opponents have seized upon as evidence that he is not fit to condemn the governor.

It was 1983, and he was on East McDowell Road an adult bookstore, when a Phoenix police officer arrested him on a charge of public sexual indecency.

"A friend of mine and I were watching a movie in a booth, and I grabbed his crotch," Buck said. "It was viewed by a police officer, and she deemed that it was public indecency."

The charge later was dismissed after Buck pleaded guilty to disturbing the peace and paid a fine.**

Buck said he decided to do something about Mecham's election after the furor began over the then-governor elect's plans to cancel the paid holiday for state workers honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So, in December, weeks before the Glendale Pontiac dealer took office, Buck appeared in front of the Capitol in faded blue jeans, a T-shirt and a fistful of crudely lettered "Recall Ev" bumper stickers.

"I was amazed at the responses I was getting," he said.

"People were smiling as they approached me. Then there was a small story in The Republic on it, and people started calling me, saying, 'Are you the Ed Buck who was passing out bumper stickers? what can we do to help?' "

But as the media focused attention on the recall, Buck began to learn about the life of a public figure.

**He was approached in a drugstore by a state Department of Public Safety investigator and asked about a prescription he was filling for the painkiller Percodan. Buck said he had photocopied an old prescription for the drug, because his dentist was out of town. The matter became widely known politically thanks in part to Mecham press secretary, Ron Bellus, who telephoned reporters to ask if they had heard of Buck's arrest. **

"I think it's underhanded and dastardly what he did," Buck said. "He got on the phone and attempted to plant the story with the press."

Bellus has said he was only asking about it out of curiosity. Buck said he believes he was singled out because of his activities.

Buck was indicted by a Maricopa County grand jury on a charge of attempting to obtain a narcotic through fraud or deceit.

A judge put the case on hold while Buck undergoes a program approved by the court that requires him to be tested for drugs every Wednesday for a year. If Buck remains clean for a year, the charges may be dismissed.