LOS ANGELES — John Duran is styling himself as a law-and-order candidate for West Hollywood City Council, posing in front of sheriff's cruisers on his campaign website and touting his endorsement by the deputies' union.
It's a stark contrast from the Duran of the early 1990s, when as a 30-something activist attorney, he helped sue the L.A. County Sheriff's Department for alleged discrimination against a gay deputy and for withholding medication from a gay jail inmate with AIDS.
Duran, 63, spent two decades on the West Hollywood City Council and is now considered part of the political old guard of this famously liberal, famously gay city, as many younger residents embrace a brand of progressivism far to the left of its founding fathers.
