New spokesman to stay in Vegas, raising questions

By David McGrath Schwartz (contact)

Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Carson City — Gov. Jim Gibbons is taking a new tack in his sometimes strained relationship with the press: moving the main conduit between his administration and the media 450 miles to the south.

For the first time, Nevada’s gubernatorial communications director will be based in Las Vegas, away from the governor’s main office and the rest of his senior staff in Carson City.

That arrangement has former gubernatorial press secretaries and other observers wondering how effectively the Gibbons administration will be able to get out its message and sell its agenda to the press and the public.

This month Gibbons abruptly announced he was replacing Communications Director Ben Kieckhefer with Dan Burns, who has served as spokesman for the Public Safety Department. Burns, who will start in his new post Dec. 1, was unavailable for comment.

According to Josh Hicks, Gibbons’ chief of staff, Burns, Gibbons’ third communications director in less than two years, will remain in Las Vegas. He will travel to Carson City for major events, such as the State of the State address in January and the opening of the legislative session, Hicks said.

“It will be extremely difficult” for Burns to do the job from Las Vegas, said Greg Bortolin, who was Gov. Kenny Guinn’s communications director from 2001 to 2005.

As Guinn’s spokesman, Bortolin traveled with the Republican governor to events and participated in policy meetings with the chief of staff, deputy chief of staff and other senior staff.

“My job was to promote the policy and the stands we took in the governor’s administration,” he said. “My feeling was, I wasn’t going to understand a lot of issues unless I sit in the room and hear the discussions.”

Hicks, Gibbons’ chief of staff, said Burns would participate in the daily senior staff meeting via video conference, and would be available by e-mail and telephone while in Vegas. Hicks called him a “seasoned veteran.”

Burns, who according to a short bio on the Public Safety Department’s Web site spent nearly 20 years as a television journalist, mostly in Southern Nevada, was unavailable for comment.

Since taking office, Gibbons has demonstrated he does not believe power needs to be centered in Carson City, as other governors have. His first chief of staff, Mike Dayton, was based in Las Vegas, leading to some complaints from lawmakers and lobbyists that he was inaccessible during the 2007 legislative session.

Gibbons himself is often absent from his Carson City office. A daily log kept by the Las Vegas Sun found that in nine weeks, from August to September, Gibbons was in his Capitol office only 12 days.

Gibbons, according to former senior staffers, has never had a comfortable relationship with the press.

In interviews, he is often defensive. He believes his private life — including his pending divorce from first lady Dawn Gibbons and sightings of him around Reno with married women — should be off limits to the media.

Barry Smith, president of the Nevada Press Association, said Burns’ being based in Southern Nevada will make his job “more difficult, and I’m not sure I can see any benefit to having the governor’s spokesman in Las Vegas.”

Communications directors are supposed to explain what administrations are doing and why, he said.

“A good one anticipates the questions that might get asked, what people need to know about the direction the administration is taking,” Smith said. “He is the second link between the administration and the media, after the governor himself.”

And during the legislative session in particular, Carson City becomes “the political center for the state,” Smith said.

“How do you stay connected from Las Vegas? It’s certainly possible, but it does seem more difficult,” he said.