RENO, Nev. – Nevada's race for governor was barely a contest until it took a scandalous turn a few weeks ago, when a cocktail waitress accused Rep. Jim Gibbons of trying to sexually assault her in a parking garage after a night of drinking off the Las Vegas Strip.
The lurid allegations in the closing weeks of the campaign have put the race back in play and put the one-time Republican front-runner on the defensive. Policy issues have taken a back seat to dueling news conferences, a growing criminal investigation and a mystery over what is on the parking garage's surveillance video.
Gibbons, a conservative five-term congressman from Reno and the only member in the House to have served in the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, had held a nine-point lead in September over liberal Democrat Dina Titus, a state lawmaker and political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
A statewide poll published yesterday by the Las Vegas Review-Journal indicated Gibbon's lead over Titus has largely evaporated. It was the first poll since the woman's allegations.
In a possible measure of how much damage the scandal has done, President Bush is headed to Nevada for the second time in a month, with a speech scheduled for today in Gibbons' solidly Republican congressional district.
“The race must be tighter than they anticipated because it should have been a cakewalk . . . for Gibbons, and we have the president coming to Elko,” said Fred Lokken, a Republican and political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno.
It was three weeks before Election Day when Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, made three 911 calls after leaving a Las Vegas restaurant where she had been drinking with a friend, the married congressman, his top adviser and others. Alternately breathless and laughing, the single mother who recently left the Wynn Las Vegas hotel-casino to work at the Bellagio hotel-casino told police that Gibbons grabbed her arms and tried to force himself on her.
Gibbons, 61, told police it “didn't happen.” He said he walked Mazzeo toward her truck and helped her catch her balance after she tripped at the garage entrance. At a news conference with his wife at his side, Gibbons insisted he had behaved like “an officer and a gentleman.”
Mazzeo dropped the complaint the day after the alleged incident and told police it was because she didn't want to start a media circus and “because of who he is.”
But last week, Mazzeo, having retained a lawyer, called a news conference to claim she was threatened, pressured and offered money through an intermediary to change her story. Mazzeo said the intermediary was a friend who told her that her life was in danger and “if you don't drop this, Chrissy, they will kill you, your baby and your family.”
Gibbons called the remarks defamatory and outrageous. Gibbons' lawyer, Don Campbell, called her an “exceedingly troubled young lady,” and her friend, a Republican who had been part of the group in the bar, said “she needs to consider seeking professional help.”
Video surveillance tapes in the parking garage were turned over to police by the garage owner. Gibbons wanted the video released because he said it would show he was innocent. A judge Tuesday ordered the tapes released to attorneys for Gibbons and Mazzeo; the footage wasn't made public.
In another blow to Gibbons, a Wall Street Journal story yesterday raised questions about ties between him and Reno-based software entrepreneur Warren Trepp, whose company has received millions of dollars in classified federal software contracts. According to sworn testimony in a federal civil lawsuit, Trepp gave Gibbons unreported gifts of cash and casino chips.
