Yeah, yeah, we know — you’re too busy working on the really important stuff, like campaigns and fundraising and the like, to spend a frivolous second thinking about what you’ll wear to Halloween parties this weekend. Sure, you could always stop by the CVS and hope that there’s a lone vampire suit left on the swept-bare shelves next to that sad bag of candy corn. But why not plan ahead just a bit and mix business with pleasure?

We asked some funny political types to share their ideas for the costumes that will inject a little more party politics into your party.

Jeff Nussbaum, writer, West Wing Writers

• Last year I bought a prison jumpsuit and went as Scooter Libby. This year, I could just change the nametag to Bob Ney, Tom DeLay, Duke Cunningham, or any of the ever-lengthening list of prison-bound Republicans.

• There’s always “Curious George Allen” – you could be a senator dressed like a monkey, or, as George Allen calls it, a macaca.

• Of course, I think the best idea would be going as Dennis Hastert in a wrestling singlet – I just can’t picture anything scarier.

John Schachter, D.C.-based bipartisan political humorist and political joke writer, www.forlaughs.com

• Dress as an adorable little puppy and you can say you’re a Dick Cheney hunting target.

• Wear the traditional “Scream” mask and go as Howard Dean.

• Dress in a drab suit and go as Joe Lieberman … and if you lose a best-costume contest at a Halloween party, refuse to accept that verdict and simply announce you’re going to run as an independent in November.

• Dress as a snowball in hell … and be Rudy Giuliani’s chances of winning the Republican nomination.

• Stay at a Halloween party far longer than you should, ignore all suggestions that it’s time to leave, be rude to anyone who even hints you’re doing anything wrong … and say you’re Donald Rumsfeld.

• Walk around with your arms up and your fingers forming “air quotation marks” so you can say you’re going as Norm Ornstein (or Larry Sabato).

 
The kids are all right, clerk tells page parents

Administrators of the congressional page program are trying to reassure parents of the current page class, which was only one month along in its fall session when the Foley scandal broke, that Congress is taking the safety and security of their innocent charges very seriously.

The Office of the Clerk “has reached out” to pages’ ’rents to tell them that “safety and security has been and will continue to be the top priority,” and to remind them that a hotline has been set up to receive any complaints, House Administration Committee spokeswoman Salley Collins said in an e-mail, just in case the folks back home were fretting.

And in an odd coincidence, the deadline for applications for the next page term, beginning in the spring, was Oct. 1, just two days after ABC News published the more sexually explicit instant messages Foley sent to an underage page. That means that many applications were probably already in the mail when the news got out to nervous parents.

But if any current or prospective pages are having second thoughts about participating, you wouldn’t know it by talking to Collins, who reports that — believe it or not — no current pages have quit the program in the Foley fallout.

 
CBO staffer muscles through Ironman race

We always knew she was tough. Anyone who spent time on the other side of Melissa Merson’s reporter’s notebook when she was a Washington scribe or covering her agency in her current role as spokeswoman for the Congressional Budget Office could tell you that.

Now, the 53-year-old has joined an elite circle of toughness, completing the legendary Ironman challenge last weekend. That’s a 2.4-mile swim, a 112- mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run. Merson finished the challenge in 16 hours, 41 minutes and 45 seconds, putting her 1,616th among the contestants.

Merson is a cancer survivor — she underwent surgery and chemotherapy to treat bilateral breast cancer in 2001 — and is married to longtime Capitol Police officer Harry Merson. Harry was on hand to place a lei around her neck after she crossed the finish line in Kona, Hawaii.

“I was ecstatic,” she told us in a phone call from Hawaii, of completing the race. “I figure, compared to cancer, this is nothing.”

Her training routine included biking or running more than six miles from her Arlington home to her CBO office several days a week. With the rigors of Ironman training behind her, the mother of two says she’s looking forward to spending more time with her family and encouraging more young people and cancer survivors to get involved in triathlons.

To Merson, congrats. And to budget reporters thinking about crossing her, beware!

 
Sen. George Allen’s camp says Sambo story is for the blogs

Sen. George Allen’s campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, wants you to know that his boss does not, NOT own a dog named Sambo. A tipster, or troublemaker (depending on your politics) wrote in that little gem to gossip blog Wonkette, and so we followed up with LaCivita ourselves.

“He doesn’t even HAVE a dog,” LaCivita said. “He’s never had a black Labrador retriever,” the breed the blog tipster identified.

But has the senator ever had a dog with a name that sounds like “Sambo”? Sam, maybe? Sambuca? No and no, LaCivita maintains, although he complains that it will now be taken as fact that his boss owns a dog with a racial slur for a name.

“But I just saw a post saying that Jim Webb is an alien, so maybe you should follow up on that,” LaCivita jokingly suggested, referring to Allen’s Democratic opponent.

Thanks, we’ll get right on that …

 
Rep. Schmidt’s campaign is a twin-sister act

Rep. Jean Schmidt, the Republican freshman campaigning to keep her Ohio seat, has enlisted a familiar-looking campaign volunteer: her twin, Cincinnati real estate agent Jennifer Black.

Black has made appearances at festivals and other events on behalf of her politico sibling double.

“She’s an incredible phone banker,” a Schmidt campaign spokesman said of Jennifer. “She gets people out of the woodwork.”

He also denied that helpful Jennifer poses as her twin, a virtual cloning that campaign staffers everywhere have dreamed of (and something that has been whispered about in Ohio circles).

“But that would make my life so much easier,” her spokesman cracked. “With a district that spans seven counties, it would be great to have two Jeans.”