Jon Ralston on the latest polls and Titus’ brushback e-mail

Friday, June 16, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

A gubernatorial race potpourri six weeks before early voting begins and hours before the candidates engage in a "Face to Face" debate:

My guess is the last choice is the best because the turnout between the slugs/ignoramuses who start early voting on July 29 and those who wait until Election Day (Aug. 15) is so difficult to predict. Gibson surely has made progress, and he wants to show his TV spots are improving his name recognition. His campaign also implied that the numbers were the reason for an earlier Titus missive, "an unprovoked e-mail attacking the Gibson campaign ."

Please. Not a chance. The reason for that e-mail was to raise money, which Titus needs for her incipient television campaign. And the fact that she mentioned Gibson's money from Henderson developers and included an oblique jab at his bundled contributions from developer Tony Marnell are just part of her campaign mantra.

Or as the missive said: "He wants to sell the governor's office to the developers, and I want to give it back to the people of Nevada. But I need your financial support to make this happen."

And she needs financial support to tell more people than those who receive that e-mail - and now add to that number those who read this column. (I hope that's a lot more for my sake, not Titus'.) One more note on the Survey USA poll: It showed Jim Gibbons well ahead in the GOP primary with 50 percent of the vote, compared with 18 percent for state Sen. Bob Beers and 15 percent for Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt. It may not mean much for the Democratic numbers, but those results comport with other data out there on the GOP side.

Is she:

A) Really interested in the enforcement of sanctions?

B) Bored with the campaign and reading Nevada Revised Statutes?

C) Putting Jim Gibson on notice about his huge amount of money over that limit?

Any guesses, folks?

For some reason, Titus makes a point of quoting the penalties: "A person who willfully violates any provision of this section is guilty of a category E felony and shall be punished as provided in NRS 193.130."

A category E felony, Titus helpfully points out to Heller, can subject violators to one to four years in prison.

It would have been much easier to simply say: "Mr. Heller, can you let Jim Gibson know you are keeping an eye on him and if he spends all that money he has over the limit, he is going to be prosecuted?"

Yes, indeed. But that would have made it seem as if she cares less about ethics reform and more about Gibson's superior war chest.

Titus has some of that excess primary money, too, that she wants to spend, but not nearly as much as Gibson. And that's the point of the letter, to scare Gibson into holding onto the cash.

But with so much at stake, my guess is that both Gibson and Titus will spend every penny to try to win the primary and worry about paying back the money later. Worse than committing an E felony would be the crime of leaving money in the bank and losing by a small margin.