KEY WEST -- The Southernmost City expects to be overrun soon with donkeys, elephants, lame ducks and even lipstick-wearing pigs.

After Wednesday's presidential debate, Key West also should attract a bunch of ``Joe the Plumbers.''

Fantasy Fest, the island's nine-day drunken party where body paint passes for clothing and CEOs mingle with drag queens, begins Friday.

While political satire has always found its way into revelers' costumes and parade floats, this is the first time in Fantasy Fest's 30-year existence that the official theme includes politics: Pirates, Pundits & Political Party Animals.

''I know of a couple of floats with metaphors for piracy in the White House or Congress that are definitely going to weave the concepts together,'' parade coordinator Judi Bradford said.

The theme was chosen more than a year ago, at the urging of some Keys' tourism marketers who said political satire would capture publicity, especially so close to the Nov. 4 election.

''This election seems to have garnered everyone's attention,'' Bradford said. ``We were ahead of the game on this one.''

On Big Pine Key, Frank and Jennifer Yowonske and a small army of volunteers created one of the 70 floats for the biggest of Fantasy Fest's 30-plus events: The Captain Morgan Fantasy Fest Parade on Oct. 25.

Called the Master Debaters, the float features eight life-sized puppets of Barack Obama, John McCain, the Clintons, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Richard Nixon.

''We never have a parade without Nixon or Marilyn Monroe,'' said Reen Stanhouse, assistant parade coordinator.

On the float sitting in the Yowonskes' driveway, the eight political figures are attired in business suits, except for Cheney, who is wearing an orange hunting outfit. No political stand is taken.

''Our parade policy is no campaigning, no VIP cars,'' Bradford said.

But the Yowonske float does have a political message of sorts: Fake dynamite is strapped to a mannequin of Osama bin Laden, who is tied to an oil rig that doubles as a portable potty.

Patriotic songs such as Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA, Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner and Neil Diamond's America will blare over the sound system along the parade route, which has attracted 70,000 people in the past.

Also in Big Pine Key, Susann D'Antonio and her group are working on a float that will feature McCain as Long John Silver and Obama as Black Bart, both real pirates.

''I hope no one is offended,'' D'Antonio said.

Their float entry includes a rolling drink cooler made into a replica of a small house under a time bomb. Its sign says: ``Foreclosed.''

Perennial write-in candidate ''Love 22,'' a Mallory Square artist, will lead the parade with a papier-mché donkey and elephant, both six feet tall. They were created by Key West artist Bill Worth, whose design is the official 2008 Fantasy Fest poster.

Past political entries have included Bill Clinton and the Seven Monicas. Last year there was the Revolutionary Tea Party featuring Fidel Castro and the slogan ''Party Like It's 1959'' and Senator Craig in Session, a gray bathroom stall with dangling feet.

Several businesses in downtown Key West also will get into the act.

SoDu Gallery was among the first, with its front window featuring ''art with a twist of politics.'' On Duval Street, Fast Buck Freddies storefront window was evolving with its political/pirate theme of ''Yo ho ho. Ransom. Pillage. Plunder. All Politicians.'' It features three mannequins chained together with masks of George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney.

The Yowonskes' float in Big Pine has a lasting message on the back, above a military-themed collage: ``Freedom Brought to You By.''

Said retired mechanic and machinist Lyle Overhulser, who worked on the float: ``People died so we can have the freedom to goof off.''

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