Jon Ralston empties out his notebook for another week, including some poll numbers on some pols, a nonrace for attorney general and a new regent hopeful

Friday, April 7, 2006 | 7:12 a.m.

A new statewide poll by Peter Hart, who conducts surveys for many clients, including NBC and The Wall Street Journal, shows the president's numbers are abysmal here but that prominent state Republicans so far have avoided the George W. Bush swoon.

The statewide survey of 1,105 voters (margin of error is 3 percentage points) showed that 52 percent of Nevadans have a negative view of the president, while 39 percent have a positive view.

Three years ago Hart found the president in Nevada was soaring with 56 percent positive and 30 percent negative.

Contrast that with Hart's numbers on Gov. Kenny Guinn and Sen. John Ensign, who have robust results.

Guinn has a 56 percent positive rating and 17 percent negative number, which show that all of the nattering nabobs who have insisted he would never recover from The Great Tax Increase were just wrong.

Ensign is equally healthy, with a 54 percent positive and 14 percent negative rating, which is the highest point Hart has found him to be in the last six years. That shows that despite the president's numbers, Ensign remains almost unaffected by the national GOP plummet.

Ensign is lucky he is so low-profile, though. Consider that his counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, has a 35 percent negative rating statewide to go with a 53 percent positive number. Better to be invisible than polarizing.

Among the gubernatorial contenders, 56 percent of the state still does not know who state Sen. Bob Beers is - that's both a problem and an opportunity for him. Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt is not known by a quarter of the state's electorate and those who know her like her by a 32 percent positive to 15 percent negative rating. Nearly a fifth of the state's ever-aware voters know who Rep. Jim Gibbons is, and those who do like him by a 43 percent-to-16 percent ratio.

On the Democratic side, 42 percent of the folks say they don't know state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, while 24 percent say they have never heard of Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson (leading me to believe the Gibbons/Gibson confusion continues). Twenty-four percent say they have a favorable view of Titus, while 16 percent say they don't, which is not very encouraging for her. Gibson's analogous numbers are 39 and 14, which means he is either doing very well or he is very lucky to have a similar name to the congressman.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, the proverbial wild card in the political deck, has a 48 percent favorable rating statewide, which may be a blow to his sycophants who think everyone knows and likes him, and a 16 percent negative rating.

Just over a fifth don't know The Happy Mayor, who probably won't run for anything, probably would have a chance at anything, but wouldn't start out as a statewide dynamo if he did seek higher office.

Jack Carter, the former president's son challenging Ensign, is not recognizable to 58 percent of the electorate and of those who do know who he is, only 11 percent think positively of him, while 15 percent react negatively. Not a good start for Carter the Younger.

But as the Republicans struggle to find a candidate and Cortez Masto suddenly is having more phone calls retuned, this race may be close to over. Yet another law enforcement group - the Peace Officers Research Association of Nevada - has endorsed her, giving the candidate for the state's top cop yet another police group to put on her TV spots and mailers.