Columnist Jon Ralston: Bid could hinge on correct change

Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2005 | 7:41 a.m.

I sat across from the woman as I have dozens of times. She sounded as distinct as ever. But those words drawling out of her mouth were like a foreign language.

"We need to think like a whole state," declared one of Southern Nevada's most vociferous advocates.

"Look at all the things I have voted for that have supported Northern Nevada," averred the woman who once sneered that Washoe County residents were sponges "just looking for a handout" from Clark County.

"Everyone out there is worried that their lifestyle is being threatened," she sympathized with rural Nevada, a section of the state that once was as unknown to her as being in the majority party in Carson City.

The divider become uniter, the insider become outsider, the sectional jihadist become ecumenical peacemaker. State Sen. Dina Titus, like so many ambitious pols before her, is trying to shuck the past to create a future -- in this case, becoming the state's first woman governor, defying anointment politics, inexorable demographics and conventional wisdom.

And as I listened to her on "Face to Face" this week, what struck me is that what once seemed impossible now seems possible. With Speaker Richard Perkins out of the contest and Rep. Jim Gibbons suddenly facing doubts about his inevitability, Titus already has shown staying power that even she probably doubted she had at the beginning of the year.

Among the remaining candidates -- unless Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman gets in -- Titus is easily the most dynamic, the quickest on her feet and the most likely to say something interesting (state Sen. Bob Beers is a close second).

But Titus also is trying to execute an amazing sleight of hand in her quest to succeed Kenny Guinn. Instead of being cast as a liberal Democrat from the South who can't scare up support outside Clark County and across party lines, Titus is recasting herself as an outsider going up against the good old boys, an engaging maverick among the bland, a moderate Democrat who loves guns and all of the state's people.

Who is this person?

For one, she is the frontrunner in the Democratic primary by any measure.

And a new poll by Zogby International shows she is only eight points behind Gibbons (44-36), running nearly as strongly as Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson (41-35).

Indeed, Titus' opponent is not so much Gibson, who has yet to announce, but the perception that she cannot win. But that is the old Dina Titus, not the new one.

Just in case, the old Dina Titus, who has been described in the most vicious terms a woman can be described by some and as a woman with more intestinal fortitude than most men in politics by others, has been taking after Gibson with unyielding vehemence.

But in a more global sense, the Titus conversion project is under way. She wants Northerners to forget those old sponge comments and remember how her voting record differs little from Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio's -- the same man she has vilified for years as a robber baron of the North.

And she wants the rural counties to know she feels their pain when it comes to water -- "We can't just go up there and take it without giving something back," she said. (That sound you hear is someone hooking a sphygmomanometer up to water czar Pat Mulroy.)

"I can't change," the protean Titus declared toward the end of the interview, sounding very much like Ronnie Van Zant, another Southerner who once longed to be free of his past. Her fate in this contest could well be determined by how quickly she can sprint from her record of votes and quotes and how skillfully she can reinvent herself from parochial partisan to gubernatorial everywoman.