Sarkozy and his wife, Cecilia, arrive at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport today for a lunch with President Bush and first lady Laura Bush.
The visit is noteworthy because of Sarkozy's status as the newly elected president of a country that has had a sometimes-uneasy relationship with the United States.
It also is interesting because many Mainers have French ancestry. Of the 1 million Mainers who identified their ancestry in the 2000 census, 100,663 claimed French Canadian roots, 137,174 said they were of French ancestry and 586 claimed Acadian origins.
That's almost one-fifth of the state's population, and it's probably a conservative estimate. Many Mainers, presumably including some of French descent, listed no specific ancestry in the census. And 10,216 others claimed Canadian ancestry, which may well include some people with French Canadian roots in Quebec or French Acadian roots in the Maritime provinces.
Elected in May, Sarkozy, 52, is a lawyer and conservative political veteran known in France as a hardliner on crime and immigration and an admirer of the United States.
A Washington Post profile published shortly before his election said he loves Hollywood movies, lists Ernest Hemingway as his favorite author and urges young people to treat Martin Luther King Jr. as a role model.
The same article said Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant father and a French mother of Greek and Jewish ancestry, supports France's decision not to participate in the war in Iraq.
To some Franco-Americans in Maine, Sarkozy leads a nation that still tugs at their heartstrings.
But to many others, the French president is just another foreign dignitary.
The discrepancy has its roots in the history of French settlement in North America.
The ancestors of many Franco-Americans sailed from France to the Canadian provinces of New France and Acadia in the 1600s, in some cases even before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620.
So, unlike European immigrants who came to the United States directly from their ancestral homelands, the families of many Franco-Americans in Maine spent hundreds of years in Canada before settling in the United States in the late 19th century or early 20th century.
"When I think of my French history or my background, I definitely think Quebec and French Canadian," said Pat Boucher of Farmingdale, who grew up in Augusta and is president of that city's Club Calumet, a Franco-American organization.
"I feel like there's a connection to Canada" rather than to France, he said, so Sarkozy's visit "doesn't really matter" on a personal level.
Most Franco-Americans in Maine "haven't gone beyond the Canadian link" to study their families' earlier origins in France, said Priscille Gagnon of Biddeford, president of La Kermesse Franco-Americaine.
She said Franco-Americans here would "probably be a little bit more interested" if the prime minister of Canada or the premier of Quebec visited Maine, because of their Canadian ties.
But others take a different view, often because they are genealogy buffs or because they have visited France.
For Rita Dube of Lewiston, who runs the Franco American Heritage Center there, France is almost a home away from home, making Sarkozy's visit meaningful.
Dube has a brother who lives in Paris and she has visited France about 20 times.
"I think (Sarkozy's visit) has some significance because of the ties I have there," Dube said.
Ray Fecteau, an Augusta barber and past president of the Club Calumet who has been to France nine times and spent the month of June there, is even more excited.
Fecteau's ancestors arrived in Canada in 1663 and remained there for hundreds...
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