A few hours before the vice president was to deliver his address, an aide, Laura Quinn, joked, "It's in draft 625."

Reminded afterward that just 69 days remain until the election, an aide joked that Mr. Kerry was preparing for a possible recount.

"We're going to go to every bar mitzvah in New York between now and Nov. 2," the aide, who is Irish-American, joked with reporters.

One senior aide who recently became a father, joked: "No, we didn't name the baby Ollie, even though several of my colleagues suggested it."

Mr. Bush's aides said the governor did not watch the skit but that his aides joked about it with him.

The mayor even went golfing yesterday, while his political aides joked about who would come into the office to answer phones today.

Mr. Solarz, his aides have joked, works exclusively on two issues: anything that involves the world outside the 50 states and anything that involves Brooklyn.

Mr. Gilmore's aides joke that their boss would never wrestle an alligator, as Mr. McAuliffe did years ago.

By the third day, his own aides were nervously joking about his taste in pool clothes.

Behind his back, aides to rival Democratic candidates joke that he is "a vampire who will not die."