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Where Kerry Takes a Break, Celebrity Is Commonplace

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Times Staff Writer

Sen. John F. Kerry flew to this quaint resort island on a chartered jet, strolled along the shore at his family’s beachfront home, glided by a lighthouse at the wheel of a motorboat and dined with -- surprise -- the Kennedy clan. The only sign of a glitch in his weekend was the flat tire on his bicycle.

Oh, and the wind was not quite right for kite surfing.

“I’m having a fabulous weekend,” the presidential hopeful said, sounding relaxed Sunday as his Secret Service entourage walked him home from a bike shop on this wind-swept island off Cape Cod.

Midway through two weeks of campaign events aimed at showing his empathy with those who are struggling to make ends meet, the Massachusetts Democrat took a break among those who most certainly are not.

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“The wind died,” Kerry called from his stepson’s motorboat as he whizzed past a boatload of news people who waited in vain Sunday morning to watch him kite surf in a wetsuit. Kite surfers ride across the water on a board, propelled by a parachute-style kite.

When the weather permits, Kerry kite surfs, windsurfs, fishes and goes boating in the waters in front of his family’s wood-shingled house near the Brant Point lighthouse at the mouth of Nantucket Harbor.

It is one of three getaways owned by the candidate’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. They have also taken breaks from campaigning at the others -- a 90-acre farm house near Pittsburgh and a rebuilt 15th-century English barn near a ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho.

But their Father’s Day weekend trip to this 14-mile-long island of scrubby bluffs and sand spits was Kerry’s first of the year to Nantucket.

It is a place that first-time visitor George Barsi of Burlington, Conn., described as “the most privileged summer spot in New England.”

“This whole island is dotted with mansions,” said Barsi, 58, a computer consultant gathering his fishing rod and gear at a beach parking lot near the Kerry house. “And they seem to have interesting names for them all.”

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On Kerry’s stretch of waterfront, hand-crafted signs posted by front doors and arched trellises announce the houses’ names: Gray Goose, Sunny Side Up, Blue Waters and Helzapoppin. Next door to Beach Plum is Sea Plum. The Kerry house, mostly hidden by tall hedges, has no name.

Responding to queries about his leisure time among the well-to-do, Kerry aides are quick to describe the candidate as more of a regular guy than his weekend might suggest.

“Let Kerry be Kerry,” his spokesman David Wade told the members of the media watching the candidate from the boat offshore. “He’s been doing this for years. It’s a place he and his family have been coming to for years. He loves to be out on the water. He loves the ocean.” Kerry would be “America’s most active president since Teddy Roosevelt,” Wade said.

Later, Wade invoked two other presidents from privileged backgrounds, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, saying, “It’s not where you come from that counts, it’s what you fight for that matters,” Wade said.

On Friday night, a blanket of fog over Nantucket prevented Kerry from flying here from Washington. So he left Saturday morning, taking his campaign plane, a chartered Boeing 757. His wife arrived later on her private jet, one of several parked on the runway at Nantucket’s tiny airport.

On Saturday at dusk, Kerry’s campaign summoned the news media to a street corner to watch him ride by on his bike. Nearly an hour later, aides reported the ride had been canceled because of a flat tire.

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That evening, Kerry, his wife, and the candidate’s children, Vanessa, 27, and Alexandra, 30, had dinner at a high-end restaurant with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, his wife, Victoria, and her parents. A small crowd applauded Kerry from the sidewalk as he walked in.

On Sunday, Kerry and his daughters went motorboating. Kerry, the skipper, wore a wetsuit, the top turned down, with a white T-shirt and blue denim jacket.

Kerry and Alexandra dropped by later at a bike shop, where he bought two tubes for his handmade Serotta.

“He had a flat and he was going to fix it himself,” store manager Greg Lockhart said.

For now, Kerry’s presence at vacation resorts is relatively unobtrusive. A team of Secret Service agents milled about his driveway but kept his street open. A few agents watched the area from a black SUV parked nearby.

“You don’t even know he’s here,” said John Rivera, 57, a Nantucket massage therapist out for a walk in Kerry’s neighborhood.

From across the street, freelance photographer Robert Scott Button staked out Kerry’s house for hours Saturday with one of his longest camera lenses. With nothing to photograph, he finally headed to a Nantucket Film Festival event where he could snap pictures of actor Jim Carrey instead.

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On an island where celebrities are commonplace -- fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger and Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga are among its notables -- longtimers are blase about a potential president in their midst.

“We’re pretty used to it around here,” said Matt Coffey, 25, who rents bicycles at another shop.

Not that they are not wary of the sort of disruption that former President Clinton brought to neighboring Martha’s Vineyard when he went there on vacation.

“To bring the Secret Service out here, stop traffic and quarantine off part of the island,” Coffey said, “that really wouldn’t go over too well.”

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