State GOP rips Democrats over Gibbons billboards

David Kihara

Thursday, March 31, 2005 | 9:50 a.m.

The Nevada Republican Party defended Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., on Wednesday against a recent billboard campaign by the state Democratic Party that implied Gibbons wanted to use Americans as "human shields" in the war in Iraq.

Calling the billboard's message untruthful and deceitful, officials from the state Republican Party also took shots against Democrats, calling them disorganized and grouped them with the former presidential candidate Howard Dean, who is now the Democratic National Chairman.

The Republicans vowed to continue defending any attacks against state Republican officials.

This bi-partisan bickering comes more than a year before the 2006 Nevada gubernatorial race and before Gibbons has officially declared his candidacy for governor.

"This is the politics of distortion," said Richard Ziser, vice chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, who spoke at the party's headquarters in Las Vegas. "To distort what Gibbons said is so disingenuous that something had to be done."

Ziser, who was joined by Brian Scroggins, Clark County Republican Party chairman, said the party did not endorse any candidate for governor but would not allow Republican officials to be publicly criticized without putting up a fight.

The two billboards in Reno and Las Vegas, installed last week, read "Gibbons for Governor? Use Americans as 'human shields' in Iraq," and are a response to a plagiarized speech the congressman gave in Elko in early March.

Gibbons admitted earlier this month that the text of the speech was unintentionally taken from a speech given by Alabama Auditor Beth Chapman to a "Stand up for America" rally in 2003. Chapman eventually turned the speech into a book titled "The Power of Patriotism: The Speech Heard Around the World."

Gibbons repeated some passages word-for-word from Chapman's speech.

While Ziser didn't raise the plagiarism issue on Wednesday, he did say that the message on the billboard was a twisted version of what Gibbons said in Elko.

Ziser said he was with the congressman in Elko when he gave the speech. He said Gibbons stated that some people -- primarily anti-war protesters -- stated they would use themselves as human shields. Gibbons merely stated that if they wanted to be human shields, "they should do this," he said.

Scroggins criticized the Democrats for installing the billboards, saying the party of the left "will say and do anything to win."

He saw the billboards as a very early attempt to influence voters before the gubernatorial race, he said, characterizing the Democrats as grossly disorganized and "desperate."

"The democrats need to give the voters more credit," he said.

The state Democratic Party remained aggressive on Wednesday, saying that while Gibbons may say that the "human shield" comment applies to only a few people, he was still discussing Americans, said Jon Summers, Democratic Party spokesman.

Summers also continued to criticize Gibbons for using Chapman's speech in Elko, saying, "The speech didn't just come to him. This was a plagiarized speech."

But he also took issue with the state Republicans defending Gibbons and asked why the congressman wouldn't defend himself to the public.

"It is interesting that the Republican Party discussed this when it should be Gibbons who responds. Jim Gibbons owes the people of Nevada an explanation," Summers said.

Amy Spanbauer, spokeswoman for Gibbons, referred all questions regarding the billboard to the fundraising organization Friends of Jim Gibbons because she said it is a campaign matter.

Robert Uithoven, spokesman for Friends of Jim Gibbons and a member of the congressman's steering committee, said the Democrats' billboard represented a clumsy attempt by the party to begin campaigning for the upcoming governor's race that focused on attacking candidates rather than discussing the issues.

Uithoven, who said he was speaking for Gibbons, said the billboard's message is misleading and "doesn't represent the facts about what happened" in Elko.

"The billboard is a complete distortion on the comments from Elko -- the (human shield) suggestion referred to people who volunteered to go to Afghanistan and Iraq who wanted to serve as human shields," he said.