July 9, 2003

Kennedy/Cuomo: The Splitting Image of a Dynasty

Cuomolot is in marital flames.

Michael Powell, Washington Post Staff Writer

Andrew Cuomo sits in his suburban Bedford, N.Y., fastness and rages about his wife's betrayal. Kerry Kennedy decamps to her Hyannisport compound, where paparazzi train telephoto lenses on her bikini-bared abs. And the other man, the "polo-playing Romeo" in tabloidspeak, hops a plane to Argentina.

The best dynastic coupling of the past few decades has come asunder. Andrew Cuomo, son of Mario, apparently discovered evidence that his wife, Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Bobby, had fallen into the arms of his former friend, the polo player, and that was that. News of the split arrived demurely the first day, as anonymous retainers announced an amicable separation.

But Cuomo's lawyer, divorce doyenne Harriet Newman Cohen, eschewed understatement the second day.

"Mr. Cuomo was betrayed and saddened by his wife's conduct," Cohen said. "But he will try to accommodate Ms. Kennedy Cuomo's desire to leave the marriage."

The rest is best rendered in tabloidspeak. KISSED OFF, the New York Post noted helpfully.

HANDS OFF!, the Post added the next day.

And when the Daily News acquired the first photograph of Kerry in the company of her ruddy and ever-so-slightly dissipated caballero, the editors slapped it on the front page with the headline: KERRY'S LOVER BOY.

It's all quite a relief for New Yorkers caught in the clamp of an unpleasant heat wave. The Hamptons are in a recessionary slowdown (a dreary summer season is upon us when the worst that the grotesquely wealthy can do is illegally drain a Hamptons pond and so deprive a few dozen egrets of a good splash) and the Cuomo-Kennedy decoupling offers splendid summer theater.

Fox television has taken to replaying any footage of Kennedy and/or Cuomo and/or the polo player more or less endlessly. And the New York Post's Pulse section ran a full-page shot of Kerry in her bikini Tuesday, with admiring analysis of her 43-year-old torso. ("She looks great," a celebrity trainer told the Post. "If she hasn't had surgery, she's got a hell of a workout routine.")

"This is the greatest example of why we don't need a royal family," says Mitchell Moss, the New York University professor. "We have people in New York who think they are royalty, have spectacular sex and act just as badly."

The Kennedy-Cuomo merger once seemed so natural. He was the dashing curly-haired prince who on their first date insisted that Kerry hop astride his motorcycle and ride out to Brooklyn to view his shelters for the homeless. She was the Kennedy daughter and "human rights activist" who traveled to India with Bianca Jagger. They married in 1990 and had three children -- twins Cara and Mariah, 9, and Michaela, 6. When Bill Clinton was elected president, they moved to Washington; later Cuomo was appointed secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where he performed nergetically.

His assessment is that his performance was splendid. "Passionate, courageous. . . a visionary," his public relations Web site says of Cuomo. He "reinvented HUD from the ground up."

During this time, Kerry was no stay-at-home Washington spouse, locked in her Northwest fastness. Her surname was not so much hyphenated as it seemed to be surgically altered when people spoke it: Kennedycuomo. She networked, flashed that Kennedy smile, and raised lots and lots and lots of money. It's not that they didn't love one another, say friends. But for a Kennedy, as for a Cuomo, politics is a mom-and-pop business.

When he ran for governor, Cuomo leaned hard on his dynastic partner. His campaign Web site featured more photos of her than of him. When he held his first vast fundraiser at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, she rose to introduce him -- and spoke for 45 minutes.

"They had this power thrust, this synergy," says New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who sat at Mario Cuomo's table at that fundraiser.

"Remember, dear," she adds, "power is a great big aphrodisiac."

But what happens when the dynastic heir fails to inherit the throne? As it happens, Cuomo entered the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination as a favorite, and wound up dropping out just before primary day. His Web site has it that this was an "exalted" display of political leadership. Maybe Kerry had a different view.

The other man is a businessman and celebrity hanger-on by the name of Bruce Colley. Fifty years old, he played polo with Princes Harry and Andrew. And with Sean Penn, he owns Man Ray, a Chelsea eatery that offers Asian-accented French cuisine of a quality that encourages celebrity diners to retain an anorexic sheen. A review speaks of flavorless barracuda ceviche" and "dull goat-cheese-encrusted turbot."

Colley and his wife, Ann, were friends with the Kennedycuomos, even vacationing together in Hyannisport. But the Daily News reports that Andrew became suspicious when he checked cell-phone bills and found an unsettling number of calls between Bruce and Kerry. Both couples tried counseling, but only the Colleys remained maritally solvent.

Cuomo's attack on his wife nonetheless shocked some. "I don't get it. There was no money to be divided, as she's in the inheritance business and he's public sector," said celebrity divorce attorney Raoul Felder. "Cuomo seems to be from the Mike Tyson school of public relations. At least the polo guy had the good sense to go to Argentina."

Still, New York demands little of its celebrities save that they provide midsummer entertainment. "In this city, you don't have to succeed by getting elected," Moss notes. "You can just have your wife sleep with the wrong person and you can always have a second act."