Jon Ralston on the latest thing in Carson City: Forummania

Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

CARSON CITY - I'm here in the middle of Forummania - can you feel it?

The excitement over the presidential candidate forum in our bucolic state capital has reached a fever pitch, rendering the legislative goings-on here, serious and otherwise, almost irrelevant - or, should I say, more irrelevant than usual?

They say we are not a real state, that we will not have a real caucus next year on Jan. 19 - "they" being the rubes of Iowa and New Hampshire. But as anyone who has been to this pastoral place will tell you, we have plenty of rubes to suck up to, too. No, I am not talking about anyone in the Gang of 63, folks - I refer to the real small-town folks here in what some wags refer to affectionately as Cartoon City.

They can make jokes about showgirls and roulette wheels and our governor. But they can't take the feel of Carson City away from us - it feels like a caucus must feel in Iowa or New Hampshire.

It all starts in a small town with real people. It's not Vegas, baby - it's rural Nevada, where Democratic candidates usually go to die, but today they come to live it up and where the Bigfoot media personality, George Stephanopoulos, comes to give us legitimacy.

Forummania - catch it!

Why, just Tuesday morning, there was Joe Biden, the voluble senator from Delaware, walking down the main drag and going into Comma Coffee for an Iowa-like event. And he was scheduled to go to a less idyllic, more rubelike place - Reno - for a speech Tuesday night.

They are all here - all except the rock star du jour, Barack Obama, who was in Las Vegas on Sunday and will surely be back. And they will all whisper sweet nothings in the ears of the faithful as they have done for so many cycles to Iowans and New Hampshirites. They will tell us how important we are, how pivotal Nevada is, maybe even how lucky we are to have Harry Reid as our senior senator.

There is no greater flattery in politics than to be pandered to - and that is what is happening today in the capital. And nothing could be better for these White House hopefuls than a tightly structured forum, where the odds of a mistake are greatly reduced, and they can still act like they love us with little chance of paying any price.

Forummania - catch it!

And who is the most thrilled person in town to have all these Democrats here? That's easy. It's a Republican - Jim Gibbons.

For at least 24 or 48 hours, whatever the governor says will not be front page news. He can say he was against the water grab before he was for it. Or he can say he was for protecting his rich Tahoe friends' vacation homes from creditors before he was against it. And he was for coal liquefaction before his energy adviser (he was for her being Indian before he was against it because she's not) said he wasn't.

Gibbons can say pretty much anything he wants (he usually does) and get away with it because all eyes will be focused on the candidate forum at the Carson City Community Center.

Gibbons actually will be at a place he feels at home today - the Venetian, run by one of his prime benefactors, Gondolier Numero Uno Sheldon Adelson. The governor is the keynote speaker today at the Black History breakfast at the hotel, where Bobby Siller, the ex-FBI agent and erstwhile gaming regulator, will be honored. Perhaps Gibbons can ask Siller (whom he referred to as "Sillers" in a news release) what he knows about that FBI probe of his involvement with wealthy crony Warren Trepp. Oh, the irony.

Whatever he says at the breakfast surely will be lost, luckily for Gibbons considering his current almost daily gaffe rate, because media outlets will be so focused on what is happening in Carson City that what happens at the Venetian probably will stay at the Venetian.

So if no one else is excited, you can be sure that today Jim Gibbons has caught Forummania, too.