A Kennedy chats up GOP

DOUGLAS Kennedy branded his former brotherinlaw, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a “bully” in Michael Shnayerson’s March book “The Contender”— adding Cuomo did not fit into the Kennedy clan when married to Kerry Kennedy. So spies’ eye brows were raised thisweek when they saw Douglas at a Pleasantville diner in Westchester County deep “in conversation” with GOP political strategist William F. B. O’Reilly. A nephew of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., aswell as of former conservative New York Sen. James L. Buckley, O’Reilly’s a top consultant to Rob Astorino, the Republican candidate who took on Cuomo in 2014. O’Reilly was “assiduously taking notes at the sitdown” with Kennedy, our spy said. Astorino’s expected to challenge Cuomo in a 2018 rematch, should Cuomo decide to seek a third term. Astorino won 41 percent of the vote in his loss to Cuomo. Astorino said in February, “I wouldn’t say definitively we are going to run. I would say that we are certain we want to be in a position to run.”