Jon Ralston wants a substantive debate on tax policy between Nevada’s gubernatorial candidates

Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006 | 7:39 a.m.

So where is the race for the state's most important office 58 days before the election?

It's easier to say where it is not: It is not over. Not by any stretch of Rep. Jim Gibbons' imagination.

In fact, despite skepticism reserved for an interactive poll that indicated the race between Gibbons and state Sen. Dina Titus is a dead heat, a new survey conducted by a respected national firm mirrors those numbers.

The poll, conducted late last month by Garin-Hart-Yang Research for an interest group unaffiliated with either gubernatorial campaign, showed Titus with 46 percent and Gibbons with 45 percent and the rest undecided. The independent poll was taken of 608 statewide voters and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

These numbers are nearly identical to the 47-44 Titus lead found at the same time by the Zogby Interactive poll, a more controversial, online survey. Gibbons pollster Glen Bolger apparently found the Republican has a slight lead, but that doesn't necessarily contradict the other two surveys.

People sometimes forget that a 4-point margin of error means that Titus could be ahead 50-41 or Gibbons could be on top, 49-42. But the question to be asked of the Garin-Hart-Yang poll is the same one that should always be asked of any survey: What does it really mean?

Here's my take: It's great news for Titus as she continues to chafe at the same question that she confronted since she began running more than 18 months ago, the question that those who supported Jim Gibson repeated ad infinitum: Can she win a general election?

The short answer, evidenced by this poll, is: Of course. The longer answer, because of evidence not considered by this poll, is: Not unless she is fortunate.

The irony reposing inside this poll is that Titus still must overcome the sectional split within Nevada, the same division once gleefully exploited as a Southern Nevada legislator. The survey discovered that Titus has a 10 percentage point lead (48-38) in Las Vegas but gets crushed by Gibbons (50-35) in the rest of the state. She, like any Democrat running for statewide office, has little margin for error - she must destroy Gibbons in Clark County to make up for losses in the other 16 - hence her unusual attention to rural Nevada.

The poll also helps explain Gibbons' early decision to go on television defining his opponent as Dina Taxes. Titus leads in the demographic that could decide the election - independents - by 41-33. But if that group - 15 percent of the vote - believes she is a tax-and-spend liberal, those numbers will change - and they already may have, considering the size of the Gibbons media buy.

The GOP campaign also is emphasizing Titus' harder edge - notice that a Gibbons spokesman, hearkening back to her slash-to-kill primary campaign against Jim Gibson, recently told a Reno Gazette-Journal reporter that Titus is the "most vicious, cut-throat campaigner, perhaps, in Nevada history."

So, the drumbeat goes: Dina Taxes won't only raise your taxes, folks; she'll also do it in a nasty way because she is the Wicked Witch of the South.

And that brings me to a suggestion to bring this race to critical mass lo these eight weeks before the balloting.

Someone should sponsor a televised debate - anyone, really - around the taxing question that has defined this state in the new millennium: Titus supported the largest tax increase in history in 2003; Gibbons spoke out against it.

Let's see them debate the issue. Gibbons can explain to voters why the taxes, and what they paid for, were unnecessary and Titus could say why she thought they were needed.

One important, defining subject. Two potential governors. Let's get it on:

Gibbons-Titus I, The Great Tax Debate.

And then let's take a poll and see what it shows.