“Real Housewives of Orange County” begins filming season 5 next week, but there is one member who has yet to sign on for another season: Jeana Keough.

Keough posted on Facebook today that she has not signed a contract for the upcoming season of the Bravo reality show saying she doesn’t think she’ll return to the cast, though she has not ruled it out completely. Jeana is one of the original “Real Housewives of Orange County” so I am SHOCKED to hear she might not return. Keough is business savvy, so this is probably her way of renegotiating a higher salary per episode.

Keough said the Housewives recently faced a “drop-dead sign date” to renew their contracts and she did not sign because she didn’t agree with the terms and she was distracted by a death in the neighborhood. She added that she believed all the other current cast members signed their renewals. “We haven’t signed,” Keough said. “We’re negotiating still. They wanted us for a longer term. I don’t know that it’s dead yet. We’re going to try to give them some time to figure out what they’re doing.”

Last week, RadarOnline posted a video interview with OC housewife Tamra Barney who said that one original housewife would not return, and season five would feature one, possibly two, new cast members. Keough said she wouldn’t regret not being on the show anymore and poked at sister housewives saying, “People are losing their homes. But they’re showing people extravagantly buying $16,000 purses and million-dollar (indiscernible). I don’t believe this is reality.”

Ever since Bravo announced Washington DC as the latest destination for the new addition to the hit franchise, people around the beltway have been dying to know which five wealthy, connected, opinionated, party-going, power-brokering women will become the country’s newest “Real Housewives”?

If you think people in our nation’s capital are too focused on the economy or North Korea to care about the casting of a reality show. Think again. Ever since Bravo announced that “The Real Housewives of D.C.” was in development, political blogs have begun speculating on who’d be tapped for the show. In a city defined by discretion it will be interesting to see what wealthy women they find who would be willing to dish on everything from sex (scandals) to plastic surgery to shopping to finances. “They want people in Washington who get to events where they mix with movers and shakers,” said the publisher of Washingtonian magazine. “But it’s unlikely that a working woman here is going to want to do this. In Washington, reputation is everything. Whatever you do is a reflection on your job.”

Lobbyist Edwina Rogers, who’s been contacted about joining the cast, said, “People are so careful about what they say and do here. I suspect that’s why there haven’t been more shows like this about Washington – because people are so private.” Rogers is a longtime lobbyist, former George W. Bush White House official, Republican strategist and now director of a trade association who has been tapped about joining the cast. Although she hasn’t decided yet if she will appear on the show, she did admit she hadn’t seen any “Real Housewives” episodes. “What I find attractive is that it would show people the cute, fun, exciting, tender side of Washingtonians, and our unique culture,” Rogers says. “There are things we do that people don’t do anywhere else.” For example, the competitive ritual of holiday cards in the political world. “We all try to come up with better and more elaborate ones, and to get ours out sooner,” she says.

Or, the show could focus on the life of a political fundraiser _ giving significant air time to the chosen woman’s cause, of course. Or how about the art of political gift-giving _ “a very big deal in Washington, all the way down the food chain,” Rogers says.

Whether she joins the cast or not, Rogers hopes it will display the changes in Washington over the last decade or so. “There used to be very few good restaurants _ now there’s one opening every week,” she says. “There are high-end retail stores, and lots of nightclubs. Ten years ago you couldn’t find a place to go dancing.”

With a resume like that I’d STRONGLY suggest she do her homework and see what she was getting herself before she decides to join the ranks of fellow Housewives.