Robert Kennedy Jr. doesn’t blame Governor Paterson for sullying his cousin Caroline’s good name. “I don’t think David Paterson had anything to do with any mudslinging,” he said at a benefit for his organization, Riverkeeper. “He’s a good governor, and he’s a good person.” But his friends are less generous.“I think that from what we now know, people on the governor’s staff were very catty and bitchy and not truthful about Caroline,” Richard Belzer said. “For them to make fun of her and hint that there’s trouble in her family was contemptible and will cost the governor dearly in the future.” Carey Lowell had similar feelings of vengeance. “I think that Paterson didn’t do himself any favors,” she said. “And I think that [Andrew] Cuomo will probably be our next governor.” (Her husband, Richard Gere, didn’t have an opinion.) In any case, the new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, isn’t very well-known in this crowd. “I don’t really know about Gilla-whatever,” said Lauren Hutton. “But Caroline is a good, sound, sane woman. And the governor appoints this—I don’t want to say blonde—but she is sort of a blonde! Who is this fluff ball?”
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