Editorial: Profound lack of judgment

Friday, Nov. 3, 2006 | 7:23 a.m.

A color photo in Wednesday's edition of The Wall Street Journal is symbolic of why the judgment of Jim Gibbons, who wants to be Nevada's next governor, is seriously flawed.

There he is in March 2005, at a formal occasion during a Caribbean cruise, smiling away along with many other people. Included in the group is the owner of a small Reno software company called eTreppid, a man whom Gibbons, a Republican congressman from Nevada since 1996, has helped secure federal defense contracts worth millions.

In fact, this businessman, Warren Trepp, is the reason for the smile on Gibbons' face - he was footing almost the entire bill for what the newspaper called a "lavish, weeklong" cruise in which Trepp "wined and dined friends and business partners aboard the 590-foot Seven Seas Navigator."

The newspaper reported that Gibbons has "used his clout to intervene on behalf of Mr. Trepp's company," and that "the tiny Reno company has won millions of dollars in classified federal software contracts from the Air Force, U.S. Special Operations Command and the CIA."

The contracts involved top secret work, meaning that they were paid from a so-called federal "black budget" that gets virtually no scrutiny. Any help a Nevada company would get from Gibbons on such contracts should be for one reason only - to assist in national defense. What does a subsequent cruise - which Gibbons never reported on congressional disclosure forms - and a free flight back to Nevada aboard a chartered jet have to do with national security?

Accompanying Gibbons were his wife, Dawn, and son, Jimmy. The newspaper reported that the retail price of such a trip for a family of three would be about $14,000. It quoted Dawn Gibbons as saying she helped pay for the trip by giving a $1,654 check to Trepp's wife, and by putting $1,508 on her credit card for on-board expenses.

For Gibbons to party for a week in such high style and largely at the expense of a private entrepreneur who has greatly benefited from Gibbons' public position displays a total lack of judgment. Gibbons nurtures a public image as a patriotic supporter of the military, but the partying - and nearly $100,000 in campaign contributions from Trepp's business enterprises - raises this question: Just what was his motivation for helping Trepp get those contracts?

The question is fortified by Gibbons' decision in the late 1980s to employ, at his home in Reno, an illegal immigrant as his family's housekeeper and nanny. A copy of the employment contract has been made public recently, clearly documenting the housekeeper's full-time employment and true immigration status. Once again, the private and public side of Gibbons are shown to be in conflict. In December 2005, Gibbons voted for a House bill that would make criminals of undocumented immigrants. And he has campaigned on a platform of getting tough on illegal immigrants. What hypocrisy.

And on Oct. 13, Gibbons' carefully crafted public image as an "officer and a gentleman" was called into question by a 32-year-old woman's allegations, which have been making headlines every day since. She alleges that Gibbons, while the two were among a group drinking in a restaurant, made sexual advances to her.

She claims that later, in the restaurant's parking garage, Gibbons grabbed her arms, threw her up against a wall and tried to coerce her into having sex. Gibbons says he was merely helping the woman find her truck when she stumbled just before they entered the garage and he grabbed her arms to break her fall.

Whether the allegations are true or not, at a minimum he displayed a severe lack of judgment for even being in a position to be the subject of such allegations, not to mention that if you take his word for it, he was willing to walk a drunken woman to her car and let her drive home.

Police who responded to the incident said the woman had been drinking for several hours and appeared intoxicated.

In our view, the next governor of Nevada cannot have the profound lack of judgment that has been exhibited over and over by Jim Gibbons. And that means Jim Gibbons should not be the next governor of Nevada.