Jon Ralston on how candidates need a reality check

Sunday, July 16, 2006 | 7:50 a.m.

As we learn that Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson schemed to keep our power bills soaring and that state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus caused our education system to fail, is there anyone on the Republican side of the governor's race who can save us from either of these awful people?

Lorraine Hunt can!

With less than a fortnight until voters - or a minuscule percentage thereof - commence choosing the next inhabitant of the state's most important office, the lieutenant governor is on the air. And unlike that utility-loving mayor and education-crushing minority leader, Hunt has a happy story to tell: She and her close, close, close associate, Gov. Kenny Guinn, rescued the state from a fiscal abyss, and the lieutenant governor helped put Nevada on "the path to prosperity."

If only this were a true-government story instead of a fictionalized one.

Hunt has two ads running - so far only in Northern Nevada, ostensibly to strike at front-runner Jim Gibbons' home ground. The spots have similar lines about the state's fiscal situation when the Guinn-Hunt administration (like the ring of that, governor?) took over in 1999.

"When Gov. Guinn and I were elected, Nevada was in tough times with a large deficit," one Hunt ad declares. And the other says: "Gov. Kenny Guinn and I inherited a financial crisis and a serious budget deficit."

Some of this is the requisite campaign ad hyperbole and some of it is patently false. Let's do a reality check:

Budget deficit? That's impossible. The Nevada Constitution prohibits deficit spending.

Tough times? All in the eye of the beholder. His was seen as a bare-bones budget, but Guinn still proposed education spending increases and a net increase of jobs.

Financial crisis? Hardly. This is what drives conservatives crazy - most "cuts" were cuts in the rate of increase or in requests from state agencies.

Guinn's goal that first year was to hold the line and conduct a "fundamental review" of state government, thus preparing voters for what he knew would be needed later: That large tax increase in 2003.

"Today, we're creating high wage jobs ... building schools of excellence ... limiting the growth of government ... and helping Nevadans achieve their dreams," one ad says. Why can't Gibson and Titus see this and give Hunt credit.

Guinn certainly does: "Gov. Kenny Guinn calls Lorraine Hunt a 'critical part of the economic success of this state' and says 'Nevada would ... benefit from her continued leadership,' " the other ads says, drawing from a statement Hunt begged her close, close, close associate to provide to her campaign.

This sounds like an endorsement, and most people who hear the ad might think so, too. But Guinn has not endorsed anyone in the race. If hooked up to a polygraph, the governor would fail miserably if he tried to describe some mythical room where Hunt worked closely with him to set state policy.

It is much more telling that Guinn has not officially endorsed Hunt because he despises Gibbons and state Sen. Bob Beers - the clearest sign that Hunt is spinning a tale of closeness that is not based in reality.

Nevertheless, the Hunt ad buy, even if it portrays a fairy tale, will force Gibbons to spend some of his huge war chest before Aug. 15. He probably won't spend much, but expect to see some ads from the congressman around the time early voting starts July 29. And unlike those horrible, nasty Democrats slicing and dicing each other, expect Gibbons to paint a rosy picture of his biography and his stances on education.

What you should not expect are any answers from any of the candidates to the questions that Guinn first posed at the beginning of the Guinn-Hunt administration in that 1999 State of the State address:

"We must ask ourselves: What is the proper role of government? What services must we provide? What's the most efficient way to provide these services? And what's the best way to pay for them?"

Seven and a half years later, those remain the seminal questions confronting the country's fastest-growing state.

Maybe we could hook all the candidates up to that polygraph, force them to dispense with their pabulum and see what their answers are.