John Stanley Pottinger

Stanley Pottinger was a Manhattan fixture in his forties, an investment banker and guest at the swellest small dinner parties. J. Stanley Pottinger was just 29, a few years out of Harvard Law and a self-described "white guy from California," when he joined the Nixon administration His first job in Washington came through an influential friend, Robert H. Finch, the former Secretary of H.E.W. and Lieutenant Governor of California. Mr. Finch asked him in 1968 to become director of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Three years later he was assistant attorney general, running the Justice Department's civil rights division. He later opened a New York investment banking boutique ("a very '80s thing to do") and in short order became a millionaire courtesy of the boom, made lots of new friends in publishing and communications, invested ("in the low seven figures") in New England real estate, narrowly avoided personal bankruptcy when the recession hit. Some of Pottinger's romantic relationships may have been useful in navigating this territory. He once shared an East Side apartment with agent Lynn Nesbit and is currently spending his time with publisher-turned-agent Joni Evans. Among his other high-powered exes are Gloria Steinem, Kathie Lee Gifford and Connie Chung.