Kennebunkport Back to Kinder, Gentler (Duller) Times : Resort: The town has put up with tight security, loud protests and a few eccentrics. But Bush’s presidential years will seal its place in history.

“Free the Kennebunkport 3,000: Elect Bill Clinton.”

No such election-year placard ever appeared here during the 1992 presidential campaign, but if it had, anyone who lives in or visits Kennebunkport certainly would have understood.

For the past four years, this trim-and-tidy New England resort town has served as the summer White House for the Bush Administration, and for at least some of the more than 3,000 year-round residents here, the end may be coming just in time.

It’s not that many Kennebunkporters dislike Bush, either personally or politically. Although Maine went for Clinton in November--and gave more of its votes to Ross Perot than to Bush--the President took Kennebunkport by storm. Many here are boyhood friends, who know him on a first-name basis.

And the publicity of being the President’s summer “hometown” has given the village a place in history. Before Bush became President, Kennebunkport had a loyal following of regular visitors, but it hadn’t yet become well-known outside that circle.

Bush’s presidency “did wonders” for the area’s name recognition, says Karen Arel, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce. “Now you call up and people know us all over the world.”

But the fame and increased attention also has exacted a price: Traffic intensified in the village’s narrow-streeted downtown, often making it difficult to get around. T-shirt vendors hit with a vengeance. And hordes of journalists began pestering local citizens for interviews.

Worst of all, though, were the demonstrations--a real shocker in a village used to quiet, well-behaved tourists. Over the past four years, there have been marches by anti-abortion groups, abortion-rights groups, Lebanese-Americans, Lithuanian-Americans and tuna fishermen, just to name a few.

The imported activism has intensified over the past two years and, some residents contend, gotten louder as well. After Bush said he hated broccoli a couple of years ago, fans of the vegetable--clad in green for extra effect--pounded drums for a day on the Kennebunkport village square.

And last year, ACT-UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, staged a demonstration that brought in several thousand participants and threatened to disrupt the town’s annual Memorial Day ceremonies. “Memorial Day here is a pretty serious matter,” one resident says.

Jane Duncan, the town manager, says Kennebunkporters have learned to take the demonstrations in stride. The American Legion, for example, in an uncharacteristic display of domestic diplomacy, invited the ACT-UP demonstrators to march in the Memorial Day parade and headed off potential trouble.

“I have to say that the town has been very patient, very hospitable,” Duncan says. “Everybody has gone the extra mile.”

But village officials concede that coping with the onslaught has strained the town’s coffers as well. While Washington reimburses Kennebunkport for police and other city services needed to protect the President and his staff, the town has to foot the bill for policing demonstrations.

Police Chief Robert Sullivan points out that during the ACT-UP demonstration, for instance, the city had to muster some 168 police officers from its own tiny staff and from neighboring jurisdictions, all at overtime rates. “Financially, that’s been killing the town,” he says.

Moreover, while the link with Bush has brought more tourism to Kennebunkport, it hasn’t sparked any real boom. Residents say the White House staffers, Secret Service agents and reporters generally have filled up the larger hotels, shifting more tourist business to smaller ones.

But Arel says the area’s retail business hasn’t been affected that much. Being the site of the vacation White House probably has insulated the town from the brunt of the recession, “but we didn’t see a real surge.”

Even so, the experience has left a wealth of memories, like the time a local hotel refused to cancel a school prom to provide more rooms for the staff of visiting French President Francois Mitterrand. Limos still pulled up that night, but there were junior high schoolers inside.

And there has been a seemingly endless procession of eccentrics, such as the man who pulled up to the front gate of the Bush compound at 2 a.m. one weekend with two reams of detailed plans that he said were drafted by God for Bush to use in ruling the world. (Police told him Bush was in Washington.)

Despite such oddities, Kennebunkporters seem to have enjoyed their four years in the spotlight and appear likely to lapse back into their pre-1988 pace after Jan. 20, with the same kind of feeling that many parents have in seeing their children off to college.

“In many ways, it’s going to be easier, but it’s going to be a lot less exciting,” Duncan says. “It’s in a way a kind of a sad time too.”