King of the Henderson Hill

Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006 | 9:16 a.m.

It's been 2 1/2 months since Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson's dream of moving from City Hall to the Governor's Mansion evaporated in a crushing Democratic primary defeat.

Gibson and his allies insist that he has come to terms with the loss - the only one of his political career - to Dina Titus.

"I think I handled it fine," Gibson says.

Yet as the general election campaign that he expected to be in enters its final two weeks, Gibson comes across not like someone who has turned a difficult corner, but more like a politician still licking his wounds.

He still won't discuss the primary campaign in any detail. In an interview Monday lasting more than an hour, there was not a hint of introspection over his 54 percent-36 percent loss - or a single smile, chuckle or grimace. He refuses to even mention Titus by name, much less endorse her. And he says he never again will run for higher office.

"I have this deep sense that I learned a lot," he said of the primary. Pressed for specifics, he said he could not put his finger on anything instructive that he took away from being in the statewide spotlight.

Except, perhaps, a desire not to be there again.

"Clearly he was disappointed in the loss," said Dan Hart, who was Gibson's campaign manager. "But he's a very resilient fellow.

"For how much effort he put into it, I think he survived. It was a campaign he wasn't used to. He and I learned a lot in that campaign."

Some say the 58-year-old Gibson simply is too nice a guy for cutthroat politics, too kind for the big time. In fact, as Titus sank her teeth into Gibson last summer - by, among other things, calling him corrupt and tying him to Henderson developers who donated heavily to his campaign - he not only declined to respond in kind, but called the four other Henderson council members to apologize for getting the city involved.

"She's a pit bull and she attacks. That's what Dina does," Councilwoman Amanda Cyphers said. "He called each one of us and apologized for dragging us into it."

When you've spent months looking into the mirror each morning believing that you are gazing at the next governor of Nevada, it would be easy to view being the mayor of Henderson as something of a political consolation prize.

But Gibson says that he finds being the mayor of Nevada's second-biggest city engaging and rewarding, and insists that he is looking forward to spending another two years at City Hall.

Even during his gubernatorial campaign, Gibson stayed focused on city business, never missing a council meeting. And if Gibson truly is happy to be staying in the town that he has called home for nearly a half century, his council colleagues and others are clearly pleased that he will still be around to lead the city.

"I think he's put the election behind him and he's looking forward to working in Henderson, where he's helped make a tremendous impact over the years," Hart said. "I'm sure he's energized as ever."

The governor's race probably has done little to dim Gibson's popularity in Henderson. In 2001 he ran unopposed. In 2005 he received a staggering 80 percent of the vote.

By the time Gibson is term-limited out of office in two years, he will have presided over a period of meteoric growth in which Henderson's population will have doubled from the 147,000 residents it had when he was first elected mayor in 1997. The city's population now is 256,000, and another 34,000 people are expected to move in before Gibson leaves City Hall.

"I didn't think it could get this big when I was a kid," Gibson admits. "I didn't think it could get this big 20 years ago. I'm not even sure I could comprehend how big it could get when I decided to run for mayor."

But if Henderson is no longer the small town that he grew up in with a state senator father, Gibson - who prides himself on being a fifth-generation Nevadan - still sees it in much the same way.

His grandfather came to town in the 1930s when Henderson was just a spot in the desert. It was not until World War II that it began to blossom thanks to the plants that still stand near downtown, and where his grandfather once worked.

The city was incorporated in 1953 with about 5,000 residents, most living in the flat-roofed World War II-era homes still scattered around Water Street. The roofs were flat so that they blended into the sand. And the city's downtown streets ran crooked for a reason: So that if Japanese bombers ever made it to Southern Nevada, they could not follow them to the plants.

Today, Henderson spans roughly 90 square miles. Gibson has led much of the recent growth, including the creation of The District in Green Valley and the future 11,500-home Inspirada planned community. Inside and outside City Hall, many credit him for keeping things running smoothly in a city that has grown more than 900 percent since he purchased his home in 1978.

Gibson still lives in that home, where he and his wife raised six children.

"I came from here," he said. "I ran because I wanted to make sure we could sustain ourselves. When you're as small as we are, when you blow it you really feel it."

Gibson tried to bring his small-town ideology to the state in the governor's race, but ran into the buzz saw of big-time politics.

Titus relentlessly attacked Gibson, drawing sinister inferences from the campaign contributions he received from developers and faulting him for the considerable problems of the Las Vegas Monorail, which Gibson headed in 2004, just as mechanical woes, delays and low ridership were generating unflattering headlines. She also reminded voters that Nevada Power - a company many feel is burning more of their money through high rates - had retained Gibson's law firm for $500,000 in 2002 to help fend off a bid by the water utility to buy the power company.

Although Gibson had nearly twice as much in his campaign treasury as Titus, he did little to shoot back. And so, Gibson - who also suffered a major self-inflicted wound when he fumbled a question about abortion in a televised interview, leaving it uncertain exactly where he stood - was the one shot down on primary day.

That leaves Gibson back where he was when the governor's campaign started - at City Hall.

And he says that's just fine with him.

His City Hall office overlooks much of the city. A "B" for Basic High School, where Gibson played quarterback, is on the side of a mountain in the distance. Next door to City Hall is a library branch named after his father.

His unsuccessful run for governor, he emphasizes, was his first - and last - attempt to stretch his career beyond City Hall. "I have no designs for higher office," he said.

If that means he will not have the opportunity to pursue some statewide priorities - among them, spending $10 million on stem cell research, providing full-day kindergarten at every Nevada school and raising teacher salaries as part of an education initiative - Gibson is comforted by the knowledge that meaningful work remains to be done in Henderson.

At a Henderson City Council meeting last month, Gibson addressed a pack of Boy Scouts on hand to earn merit badges.

"Local government is closest to the people," he told the Scouts. "In some ways it's the most important form of government."

When Gibson says it, it's easy to believe it.