Jon Ralston on how Nevada’s reputation as the Great Rotten Borough is being reaffirmed

Friday, Feb. 16, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

The juxtaposition is inescapable: On the same day the local media leads with a story of a bagman/former county commissioner being sentenced for his role in a sordid, low-level bribery scandal, a national newspaper leads with a piece about the governor being investigated by the FBI in an alleged high-level bribery scandal.

The Great Rotten Borough, the Nevada envisioned more than 40 years ago by Gilman Ostrander, must seem pretty rotten today to local and national newspaper readers. The G-Sting hangover persists with the sentencing of Lance Malone. But doing favors for a strip club boss, while sickeningly scandalous, somehow seems mild compared to Jim Gibbons being looked at by the feds for accepting gifts and money from a contractor - a pal named Warren Trepp whom the former congressman is accused of trying to help feed at the near-bottomless federal trough.

Malone was an ineffectual, almost comical elected official, one of seven votes when he was in office and a cartoonish surfer dude of a criminal. Gibbons is the governor, with geometrically more power to use and potentially abuse.

The story in Thursday's Wall Street Journal about Gibbons, a follow-up to a thread the paper started just before the 2006 election, had one of the worst headlines the governor could have imagined: "Nevada governor faces FBI probe into contracts."

At the moment he read that, the governor must have rued the day that Dawn Gibbons banned alcohol from the mansion. And the first lady by now must feel her legs getting wobbly from all that standing by her man.

Gibbons had plenty of problems already. As the Rodney Dangerfield of Carson City, he is fast becoming the punch line of many Legislative Building one-liners. You can make jokes about a guy who doesn't know a Turk from an Indian, or can't describe the centerpiece of his education agenda, or declares he might take fees out of the budget he proposed because he now realizes he's against fees. That is irresistible comedy material.

But an FBI probe is no laughing matter, especially since the Journal story seems to indicate this story has what we Fourth Estaters call legs, despite Gibbons' demand for a retraction. I have no doubt that partisans and others are perusing the recall statutes and that Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who tried to steal Treasurer Kate Marshall's office, may be eyeing a bigger one now.

What is so devastating about the Journal story is the disclosure of e-mails that have the whiff of smoke from a gun pointed at the governor's head. Consider what the Journal reported:

The Journal reports that these are some of dozens of e-mails to and from then-Rep. Gibbons, who at one point instructed an eTreppid executive to use a private e-mail that is "a direct link to my desk and does not go through anyone else."

Maybe this is all innocent - maybe the e-mails are fabrications. Or maybe that money promised to Jim and Dawn was a legal campaign contribution, although it's hard to explain the paranoia unless Trepp was afraid the exchange could be misconstrued if it ever became public - I hate when that happens. Or, perhaps the Trepps simply planned to give Jim and Dawn spending money on the cruise (let's just hope Dawn wasn't going dress shopping!).

This hole would be hard enough to dig out of if Gibbons weren't already operating from a subterranean level. No charges may ever be filed, and the FBI probe may evaporate. But the embarrassment to Nevada occasioned by the governor's mug being on Page One of a national newspaper couldn't be less propitious and will have much more bite than any G-Sting.

To all of the presidential hopefuls on their way here, let me be the first to say:

Welcome to the Great Rotten Borough.