Sunday, June 4, 2006 | 7:34 a.m.
With fewer than two months until about 10 percent of the state's residents start deciding the nominees for Nevada's most important office, it's worth asking in this Year of the Somnambulistic Campaigns: Is the Republican primary for governor over?
State Sen. Bob Beers and Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt talk a good game - well, sometimes - but can anyone paint a scenario whereby they can persuade a significant bloc of GOP primary voters to abandon front-runner Jim Gibbons, the congressman who would be governor? I don't think so.
Gibbons is in his see-no-evil, speak-no-evil, hear-no-evil pose, sitting atop a multimillion-dollar treasure chest he wants to keep locked until after Aug. 15 (and early voting starts July 29).
Say what you will about Gibbons and his 2005 Year of Gaffes, but he has executed a near-flawless campaign in 2006, avoiding any sticky situations and letting his opponents and we Fourth Estaters whine about his refusal to debate.
The congressman is now in the position where even if he does a couple of debates before the primary, which probably will have tightly controlled rules that don't allow for real to and fro, any self-inflicted damage will be minimal and can be fixed by turning the key and opening that war chest.
(Although as a political analyst I understand the front-runner, minimize-the-debates strategy, as a voter, and more importantly, as the host of a program on which Gibbons is afraid to debate his opponents, I am outraged. Or at least quite irked.)
The Gibbons campaign is remarkably disciplined and confident right now.
Some of his handlers don't even believe they have to air any TV ads during the primary, thus saving his millions to protect his lead in the general, when either Dina Titus or Jim Gibson will be scraping together money for their own commercials.
If Beers or Hunt were to make any headway in the polls - they trail the congressman by as much as 35 points in some surveys - Gibbons could spend a few hundred thousand on TV. But is movement by Hunt and / or Beers even a realistic possibility?
Hunt recently wrote a check for $800,000 to her campaign. But that doesn't mean she will spend it. And what will the message be?
Her consistent assertion that she was Gov. Kenny Guinn's right-hand woman is not credible, nor will it be backed up by the governor because it is not true. And she would have to run some positive ads about herself - brought in economic development, went to China a lot to get business, has a nice restaurant - before trying to remove Gibbons' spleen without anesthesia.
As for Beers, he is a natural campaigner and has a natural issue - the Tax and Spending Control initiative. But he has little money as evidenced by his goofy Web ads and Web video messages. If you have money, those commercials go on what is known as real TV.
I think Beers probably appeals to a lot of the GOP base. But that base generally likes Gibbons and is unlikely to buy that Beers has unmasked Gibbons as some sort of Ted Kennedy clone because the congressman opposes TASC, which may not even qualify for the ballot. And if Beers can only get that message to the universe of people willing to go on a Web site, he really has no chance.
The Gibbons campaign, thanks to all that money and the discipline lacking in 2005, is revved up and ready to go.
Direct mail pieces, billboards and radio spots are about to be unleashed.
He would not seem to have a care until the post-Aug. 15 world.
The only danger for Gibbons is that people seem to be paying less attention this year than usual. The only interest seems to be in how all politicians are corrupt and how all politicians should throw all illegal immigrants (and some of the legal ones, too) out of the country.
If you want to know who the real somnambulists are this year, look in the mirror, folks. But don't make a lot of noise: Gibbons would hate for anyone to wake up at this point.
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