ALBANY, N.Y. – Actor Chevy Chase, director-actor Rob Reiner, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the former U.S. attorney general, Janet Reno, last week endorsed candidates in New York politics, where star power has often been a tool and a target.

Mr. Reiner was a co-host of a fundraiser in Los Angeles for Andrew Cuomo, who is one of several Democrats running for the 2006 Democratic nomination for state attorney general. The same day, the only announced Democratic candidate for governor, Eliot Spitzer, announced endorsements by Mr. Chase, actress Blythe Danner, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and folk singer Pete Seeger. In addition, a Democratic candidate for attorney general, Denise O’Donnell, announced a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser with Ms. Reno.

“I am honored to endorse Eliot Spitzer for governor and cannot wait for him to take on the state’s biggest pollution problems,” Mr. Kennedy, a longtime leading environmental lawyer in New York and son of the slain senator and 1968 presidential candidate, said. “If anyone can solve these issues, it’s Eliot Spitzer.”

Mr. Kennedy is among more than 100 “Environmentalists for Spitzer,” which include many locally known environmental leaders from around the state along with nationally known figures. They include Lois Gibbs, a former Love Canal resident who helped galvanize the global environmental movement 30 years ago.

Ms. Reno said of Ms. O’Donnell: “She has the independence, the integrity, and the experience to protect the safety of New Yorkers.”

But whether big names from politics and Hollywood are a help or hindrance is questionable. In 2004, Republicans famously used Democratic candidate John Kerry’s Hollywood endorsements to paint him as out of touch with mainstream America.

“Here’s a shocker,” the New York Republican chairman, Stephen Minarik, said about Mr. Spitzer’s endorsements by entertainers. “The Hollywood left supporting a liberal Democrat. Spitzer can court ‘Tinseltown’; we’re focusing on New York’s towns.”

“When they mock this support, what they are doing in essence is demeaning the good works these people have done,” a campaign spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, Ryan Toohey, said. “They are saying it’s all celebrity value when in fact these people have done really good things for their community and for New York State.”

For example, Mr. Toohey said Mr. Chase and his wife, Jayni Chase, have a record of advocacy for children’s health, and Ms. Danner sits on the board of the influential Environmental Advocates. The endorsements work because they show a depth of support for Mr. Spitzer by people known locally or nationally, and that can resonate with voters, he said. Mr. Toohey also noted that in October, Republican Mayor Bloomberg put one of his supporters, the former NBA star, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, in a campaign commercial.