Jon Ralston on why, whether or not she chooses to admit it, Dina Titus’ political career in Nevada is over

Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2006 | 7:04 a.m.

More than a decade ago, when the likes of then-Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones and then-Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa were being talked about as possible governors, I had dinner with Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus.

During the ride down Carson Street in the state capital after the meal, I wondered why Titus wasn't thinking about herself as the first female governor, because she is as smart and talented as the others. She expressed no interest.

Almost five years ago, I wrote a column suggesting Titus was the only person who had the brains, savvy and knowledge among state Democrats to run a credible race against Gov. Kenny Guinn. She was at midterm and had nothing to lose. She ignored me. (So many of them do.) This year Titus heard the gubernatorial call and lost to a man who confronted cascading scandals during the last three weeks of the campaign, with her negatives soaring to unprecedented heights and with depressed Democrats whispering she was the only candidate who could have lost to the scarred GOP nominee.

After 20 years in public office, after opportunities missed and opportunities squandered, the realization has hit almost everyone but Dina Titus. I plumb not Shakespeare nor Penn Warren, but the great philosopher Boz Scaggs, who once crooned: "So why pretend. This is the end."

The sad song: "It's Over."

And indeed it is, sadly, for Titus, whose bizarre post-balloting behavior only cements that she either needs to retire or, if possible, remake herself. Having seen many losers over two decades, sore and gracious alike, I cast a jaundiced eye on any postelection statements by the vanquished. But this goes well beyond Titus' unseemly sneering at the governor-elect or her audacious unveiling of a lead balloon for Congress.

You don't need a Woodwardian investigation to see Titus' state of denial.

She has blamed many factors for her loss - those anti-Democratic rural folk, the infection of sexism in the body politic, among others. But she has not pointed one finger in the mirror to see that her unprecedented negative ratings - close to 50 percent - made her unelectable even against a man accused of assault, discovered to have housed an illegal nanny and exposed for taking a cruise from a wealthy donor. I wonder if Jim Gibbons' margin would have shrunk had he been caught on camera shooting a member of the media (I have no one in particular in mind).

Titus lost because she ran a woeful general election campaign and because too many people don't like her. They don't like her because Gibbons told them not to (remember Dina Taxes?) and because she told them not to. The ad nauseam references to her accent are patently inane until you realize that the voice was seen as a window to her personality, her temperament, her fitness to serve. Sad but true.

Titus deserves credit for doing what Gibbons refused to do - take positions on issues and present a vision. And she remains a dynamic, inimitable presence. But Titus must realize that she is in the final act of her career. There were rumbles of a coup to take her minority leader's' spot away from her, but even her caucus enemies could not bring themselves to pull out their salt shakers on the wounded Titus.

She is less relevant now than ever as Majority Leader Bill Raggio can hold his Gang of 11, and she will constantly be facing second-guessing among her Gang of 10. And despite her musings about taking on Rep. Jon Porter, none of the party's leaders will put her at the head of the line. They know what they knew when they fretted about her as the gubernatorial nominee: Her negatives are not just confined to Elko and Fallon. They are there in Henderson, too. In that April 2002 column in the Sun, I wrote this of Titus' chances against Guinn:

"Could she win? Doubtful. She is reviled outside Southern Nevada for her Clark County jingoism, she may not be able to keep her acerbic nature in check and she will never match Guinn's money or organization." What seems prescient is now fact. It's over. Dina Titus is a walking political corpse and only a miraculous makeover can revivify her.