By Marc Fisher

Tuesday, February 17, 2004; Page B01

On paper, a John Kerry-John Edwards ticket would be a standard exercise in geographic diversity, matching Kerry's dour Massachusetts lockjaw with Edwards's sugary North Carolina drawl. In Georgetown, however, there's a different map of presidential politics: The two senators now topping the Democratic race live but one block apart.

On the campaign stump, Kerry and Edwards make much of the plight of Americans who have been left out, who have lost jobs or lack proper health care. In Georgetown, the two men live in breathtaking splendor, each in the most expensive and impressive abodes on their respective blocks.

Kerry's house on O Street NW is a stately brick Colonial, a conservative-looking home valued at $4.3 million. Built in 1900, it has 23 rooms on four stories, with 10 bedrooms, six baths and seven fireplaces.

Edwards's house just a block over on P Street NW is a clapboard affair, a freshly painted showcase that the senator bought 14 months ago for $3.8 million. Built in 1820, it has 13 rooms on four stories, with six bedrooms, six baths and one fireplace.

Kerry does not actually own his house; it, like all but one of the properties he shares with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, remains listed in property records under the name of her previous husband, the late Sen. John Heinz III, heir to the ketchup fortune.

Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, have been busy in the District real estate market since they arrived in Washington in 1999. They bought their first house, a more formal mansion just across Massachusetts Avenue from the Bill and Hillary Clinton place, for $2.2 million in 2000, then flipped it a couple of years later, selling it for $3 million to the Hungarian government for use as an embassy. The Edwardses spent some months in rented quarters in Spring Valley while their Georgetown place was being renovated.

On the campaign, questions about privilege face both senators -- Kerry is a millionaire in his own right and many times more so through his wife, whose fortune is estimated at $550 million; Edwards was born to working-class parents but made millions suing doctors in malpractice cases.

Kerry parries questions about his wealth by noting that the Roosevelts' and Kennedys' money hardly prevented them from connecting with the pains of average Americans.

And Edwards emphasizes his parents' struggles working in the textile mills, raising three children in a small town in rural North Carolina.

Both candidates can argue that even if they live in ultimate luxury, they remain frugal with other people's money:

A survey by Fundrace.org of presidential candidates' spending on hotels as they crisscrossed the nation found that while Al Sharpton spent an eye-opening $3,598 per night on lodging and President Bush paid an average of $607 per night, Kerry spent $202 per night on lodging and Edwards $238.

With politicians of modest means an increasingly rare commodity in the upper reaches of the profession, there doesn't seem to be much public resentment of wealthy pols.

Still, in Georgetown, some neighbors worry that their narrow streets could attract tourists eager to see how the would-be presidents live. There isn't much to see, the neighbors warn.

Neighbors of the two senators say neither family has much contact with others on the block. (A third Democratic senator, Max Baucus of Montana, lives down the street from Edwards.) But then again, in that part of Georgetown, people don't tend to hang out with one another.

"They are very busy, were even before he became a candidate," said Mary Raiser, a Kerry neighbor. "We're all kind of private. The neighborhood doesn't have an association or anything like that. The only neighborhood activity is, if they're raising money for Volta Park, we'll make a contribution."

But neighbors reject the idea that Kerry or Edwards might be detached from the realities of ordinary American life. "We see John on Nantucket, and he's one of the guys, one of us," Raiser said of Kerry. "We've never felt him to be patrician."