Suddenly, Nevada GOP Candidates Are Reeling
- By Nicole Duran
- Roll Call Staff
- Oct. 26, 2006, Midnight
Some key Republican candidates in Nevada have encountered serious turbulence in recent weeks as they try to land their campaigns on the winning side of the Nov. 7 elections.
Their controversies could not only adversely affect their own electoral chances, but could also hurt other GOP campaigns. And with Nevada and other Western states increasingly seen as battlegrounds in presidential elections, there could be long-term implications for the balance of power in the region.
Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.), who just weeks ago looked like he had a lock on the governor’s mansion, is now in a pitched battle with state Sen. Dina Titus (D), thanks to a spate of bad news that won’t help the GOP as it fights to hold on to two Silver State Congressional seats.
A Las Vegas cocktail waitress accused him of assault and of coming on to her — and he denies both charges. Then a woman who worked for the Gibbons family as a nanny revealed that she was an illegal immigrant at the time.
Gibbons’ wife, former state Assemblywoman Dawn Gibbons (R), who lost her bid to succeed her husband for the 2nd district seat in the August Republican primary, said she believed the woman was in the country legally when she worked for them in the 1980s.
Jon Ralston, a Las Vegas-based commentator, said it is too soon to tell whether Gibbons’ woes will trickle down the ballot.
“Whether it hurts the whole ticket remains to be seen but it certainly will hurt Gibbons and could cost him the race,” Ralston said.
In the suburban Las Vegas 3rd district, Rep. Jon Porter (R) has been forced to fend off allegations that he illegally solicited campaign contributions from his Congressional offices.
A Porter spokesman denied the accusations by a former staffer, calling him “disgruntled,” and said Porter is on track to win a third term.
“The Congressman clearly denies the allegations of the former staffer who apparently was not happy after he left,” said Ryan Temme, Porter’s campaign spokesman.
Asked about the possible political fallout from the charges, Temme replied, “I think Nevada is a pretty independent state and it doesn’t seem to be too negative or anything like that.”
Democrats have tried not to crow about Gibbons’ and Porter’s misfortunes too loudly but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee believes the news can only help its candidates.
Porter is running neck-and-neck with Tessa Hafen, the 30-year-old former press secretary to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), in public polls.
Jill Derby (D), a member of the state’s Board of Regents, is also deadlocked or narrowly trailing Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller (R) in the race for Gibbons’ open seat.
“Any ethical problem that a member of the GOP has in Nevada will certainly affect the rest of the ticket,” said Adrienne Elrod, a DCCC spokeswoman.
Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said voters would consider the charges about Porter’s fundraising “with skepticism” because they come from a former employee.
“To me it looks like the Democrats have abandoned this race and the unions have tried to pick up the slack but there is no more battle-tested incumbent than Porter in a [competitive] district like that,” he said.
The DCCC has only spent $80,000 in the 3rd district so far, though the Service Employees International Union and some teachers unions have collectively spent more than $660,000 to help Hafen.
The DCCC plans to go on the air for Hafen in the last week of the campaign, according to a Democratic source.
“As we have since the very day Tessa Hafen announced her run for Congress, the DCCC has been very committed to her candidacy,” Elrod said. “Tessa was on our first round of ‘Red to Blue’ candidates, is running dead-even with Jon Porter, and she will undoubtedly have the resources she needs to cross the finish line to victory on Nov. 7.”
Meanwhile, Republicans are sufficiently worried about Heller, who emerged from a bruising three-way primary broke and facing a fractured party, that the NRCC is on track to spend about $430,000 for advertisements to prop him up.
The DCCC is on pace to spend about the same to bolster Derby’s chances.
The district, which encompasses the entire state except for Las Vegas and some of its suburbs, is usually reliable Republican country. Gibbons won a fifth term in 2004 with 67 percent of the vote, and President Bush captured 57 percent that year.
Collegio downplayed the NRCC’s expenditure there.
“Open seats are competitive no matter how you slice them,” he said. “For a lot of voters Jill Derby has been a blank slate. As they find out she supports tax increases and amnesty for illegal aliens, they are going to be a lot less likely to vote for her.”
Collegio also rejected the notion that the revelation that Gibbons employed an illegal immigrant more than a decade ago even while taking a hard line on immigration policy will hurt the rest of the ticket.
“The whole thing is that voters in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional district have elected Gibbons to Congress year after year,” Collegio said. “Either way he’s going to have to over-perform there in order to make up for downtown Las Vegas. I tend to think the voters will give a longtime incumbent like Gibbons the benefit of the doubt.”
