Victor of dirty primary gets muddied but prepared

Wednesday, July 26, 2006 | 7:29 a.m.

The attacks between state Sen. Dina Titus and Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson - two Democrats running for governor - have reached the absurdist "meta-attacks" stage: attacks about attacks.

Friday, for instance, Gibson sent out a press release that said, in part, "Now, she's trying to tell you that Jim Gibson is slinging mud don't believe it. It's just another Titus lie."

Gibson isn't slinging mud, that lying liar is.

Conventional wisdom has it that the Democratic campaign will leave the winner broke and battered and give an advantage to the Republican front-runner, U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons.

Political scientists who have studied competitive primaries aren't so sure. They say a tough primary can bring valuable free press and compel candidates to sharpen their skills. Gibson and Titus are forced to confront ambivalent or hostile audiences and win them over.

Much of the analysis, the political scientists warn, depends on Gibson and Titus reconciling and replenishing spent campaign funds - very big ifs.

As Gibson and Titus have been slugging it out, Gibbons is spending a lot of his time in Washington and won't debate his Republican opponents - Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt and state Sen. Bob Beers - until the August recess.

Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University and the Brookings Institution, said there's no strong correlation between a tough primary and the results of a general election: "A competitive race in and of itself doesn't signal there'll be damage to the eventual winner."

Stephen Ansolabehere, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist who has quantified the relationship between primaries and general elections, said there is no hard and fast rule and only a weak and irregular link between a competitive primary and the results of the general election.

A primary can introduce a candidate to voters and drive up his or her name recognition, said David Lublin, an American University political scientist: "People often don't like to vote for someone whose name they do not recognize when printed on a ballot."

Name recognition is important for Gibson because he has no statewide profile, said Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

A primary also forces the candidate to hone his or her skills, develop a paid staff, recruit volunteers and create a grass-roots operation. Lublin pointed to Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run when he beat back adversity in the Democratic primary, crystallized by the night of the New Hampshire primary, where he came in second and announced himself "the Comeback Kid."

Both Gibson and Titus are dealing with each other's negative attacks. The primary allows them to determine the most effective response for the fall.

Gibbons occasionally swats at Beers and Hunt, but for the most part has avoided an intraparty squabble. By the time he debates them, early voting will have already started.

This raises the question of whether Gibbons will be ready for a tough fall campaign. His district is so reliably Republican that he never had a real race after winning office in 1996. In his only statewide contest, he lost handily to then Gov. Bob Miller in 1994, a landslide Republican year nationally.

What matters, the political scientists said, is whether Gibson and Titus can reconcile and unify after the primary.

"If it's particularly nasty, and whoever the loser is refuses to show up at a unity rally, you could have some problems in the fall," McDonald said.

It's quite clear Gibson and Titus don't like each other, although they've both said they'll support the eventual winner.

Another factor: money. Gibson and Titus are spending theirs, while Gibbons, who just started running TV ads, is sitting on a pile of dough.

As for the Democrats' negative attacks on each other, Duffy said although it's true the attacks already are out there, Republicans will recast them, perfect them, as it were, for Republican and unaffiliated voters.