Jon Ralston on the latest revelation to jar Jim Gibbons’ run for Nevada governor

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006 | 9:18 a.m.

You can hear the sound from Reno to Las Vegas, the cacophonous hiss of a slow leak from a balloon that has been unreasonably inflated for a decade.

That sound is of helium rushing out of the Jim Gibbons balloon, which had been soaring ahead of Dina Titus for weeks, but now is losing altitude every day. The only question remaining is whether it will crash to Earth by Nov. 7 - Gibbons should thank God for the early voters who don't have the full impact of the enormous weight of the Friday the 13th story and this week's revelations that his family compensated an illegal immigrant in the late 1980s and then filed (and dropped) extortion charges against her as he was preparing to run for Congress.

The confluence of these events - some of them helped along by partisan operatives, of course - is almost unprecedented. Imagine a baseball team with a five-run lead in the eighth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. Then, the other team begins scoring at will and four runs cross the plate in the bottom of the eighth with an assist from the seemingly unbeatable front-runner. And who has all the momentum going into the final inning?

Somehow, "Dina Titus will raise your taxes and took money from telemarketers and won't release her campaign contributions" doesn't have quite the resonance of sex, alcohol and an illegal nanny in the house. And now the media, which have labored to continue the Friday the 13th story with more angles than Freddie Krueger has talons, don't even have to work at it: Chrissy Mazzeo, the woman who claims Gibbons assaulted her on Oct. 13, has announced her lawyers will host a news conference this afternoon.

We will soon learn whether this news conference is legal or political - or both. A case could be made that Mazzeo remaining mute actually maximized the damage to Gibbons, who now will be able to unleash whatever research he has ferreted out about her background before she speaks (if she, unlike him, answers questions).

But so long as that story persists in media outlets that people read and watch, the Gibbons dirigible will continue to lose air like the Hindenburg and continue hurtling downward. And if one inferno isn't damaging enough, the additional fire the Gibbons folks are now fighting over the family's relationship with an illegal immigrant in the late 1980s only hastens the descent. The Gibbonsites can insist they never actually employed the women - but it all depends on what the definition of "employ" is.

The Gibbons campaign claims that the congressman and his wife, Dawn, did not know Patricia Sandoval was an illegal immigrant until well after she started babysitting and housekeeping duties. This despite having the woman in their home for months and having her recommended by the previous owner of the house they had moved into.

At best, the Gibbonses should have known she was illegal - if you believe they didn't. They at least should have known that when they somehow found out she was illegal, they could not employ her as they sought to get her legal status through accepted procedures.

And their story that after the late '80s they barely saw her does not comport with her being seated among Gibbons intimates when the then-assemblyman returned to the Legislature from a triumphant stint in the Persian Gulf in 1991. That the family accused her of extortion years later and then dropped the charges as Gibbons was running for Congress only makes the story more bizarre and suspicious - as does her assertion that she was forced to stay out of sight whenever anyone came to the house.

Does the story matter less because it took place so long ago? We'll find out what voters think, although Gibbons taking such a hard line on immigration this year surely seems even more salient - or hypocritical - now.

One more irresistible note: For all those who deride my biennial rants about early voting, I submit as witnesses for the defense one Chrissy Mazzeo and one Patricia Sandoval. What say you now as that unmistakable hiss continues to emanate from the SS Gibbons that once flew so high?