Duplicitous donor nearly gulls Gibbons

By David McGrath Schwartz

Wednesday, July 2, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Woe be the politician who forgets to disable the part of his campaign Web site that solicits donations.

To wit: None other than Gov. Jim Gibbons has gotten dinged by a ne’er-do-well — or curious citizen, depending on whom you ask — who slipped a $101 credit card contribution to the governor’s campaign the day after the special session — and then complained that the governor had illegally accepted a donation.

The governor, the lieutenant governor and legislators are prohibited from soliciting or accepting campaign contributions 15 days before, during or after a special session.

Gibbons’ campaign team said its Web site’s main page, gibbonsfornevada.com, was shut down in early 2007 but that, inadvertently, the specific Web page that handles donations was still operating. The governor’s staff blamed the mix-up on a company that processes online credit card payments.

David Turner, treasurer of Gibbons’ campaign, said the money was never received and the company that processed the credit card transaction has refunded the money to the donor.

“This was somebody trying to cause a problem, get some press,” Turner said.

Secretary of State Ross Miller sent a letter to Gibbons on Tuesday, asking him to respond in writing to the complaint.

A campaign finance law violation carries a $5,000 fine and possible court and legal fees. And then there is the political ding.

Gibbons’ office fired off a letter of its own Monday. Dani Denton, a political adviser to Gibbons, wrote in an e-mail to the company: “I have no clue how a contribution was accepted by you on Saturday. This causes us MAJOR problems as it is ILLEGAL for us to accept a contribution during a Legislative Session.”

The instigator of all this: Mark Nash, a Las Vegas resident and a registered Democrat, who read a news story Saturday about how Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Henderson, was still accepting donations through his Web site Friday.

Using the Yahoo.com search engine, Nash quickly found Gibbons’ political contributions Web page.

“They made it sound like I’m some sort of technological wiz,” he said. “It would be fair to say I’m not a fan of the governor. But I would say that puts me with 80 percent of the population right now.”

After he got a receipt for his donation, he e-mailed a complaint to the secretary of state’s office.

This isn’t Nash’s first go-round on the contribution-to-test-campaign-finance-law ride.

During the 2005 legislative session, Nash and two other people made donations to then-Speaker Richard Perkins through his Web site. Perkins was then presumed to be a Democratic candidate for governor.

As of Tuesday, Web sites for Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, and Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said the candidates could not accept contributions.

On Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki’s campaign Web page there was no link, to donate by credit card.