‘The incident’ finally political fair game

By J. Patrick Coolican

Saturday, Nov. 4, 2006 | 7:25 a.m.

For some time, the allegation Chrissy Mazzeo made about Rep. Jim Gibbons remained - on the surface anyway - in the legal realm.

Politics moved to the forefront of the saga Friday, however.

Gibbons' Democratic opponent in the governor's race, state Sen. Dina Titus, has been unable to get her message out in the media, with their fixation on Gibbons and his problems. So she held a news conference, attacking Gibbons, a Reno congressman, for running an advertisement trying to blame Titus for his recent political problems.

"I don't know what Jim Gibbons was doing on the night of Oct. 13, but I do know he was not at the debate with me," she said, referring to a TV appearance she made that he had declined.

She also deftly tried to move the focus off of Gibbons' alleged assault of Mazzeo, which some Titus supporters fear may win him sympathy, and toward two other scandals that have upended him.

The first is an allegation that he hired an illegal immigrant and the second, reported in The Wall Street Journal this week, that he secured lucrative government contracts for a friend who gave him campaign money, a lavish cruise and other gifts.

She called the relationship with Gibbons' friend, Warren Trepp, "classic pay-to-play" and said, "It was quite an enjoyable trip from the look of the pictures."

The Gibbons campaign responded with a tough attack of its own: "Dina Titus has been doing the public bidding for union bosses and trial lawyers her entire political career, while accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from them in campaign contributions. For her to charge anyone with pay-to-play politics is laughable. Nevadans don't buy it, and she knows it."

One disadvantage for Gibbons is that he can't hold his own dueling press conference, which would inevitably be filled with difficult questions about Mazzeo, the illegal immigrant and Trepp.

Titus challenged Gibbons to a final debate on Monday, where she'll again appear without him, this time on public radio.

Gibbons declined and again accused Titus of a smear campaign.

The politics extended to Mazzeo's attorney Richard Wright, as well.

At an earlier news conference, Wright lashed out at the local media for credulously accepting damaging - if petty - leaks about Mazzeo, the alleged victim. Meanwhile, he noted, the character of the accused was being challenged in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, not known as a bastion of the liberal press.

Wright also said the Gibbons campaign had made several demonstrably false statements about the Gibbons-Mazzeo affair, and yet the media were accepting its statements as fact.

He said Gibbons and his team were trying to "run out the clock" before the election and make sure the truth of what happened Oct. 13 isn't known.

Gibbons has said he did nothing wrong.