Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.)
Claims to fame: Governor of Nevada; former U.S. House rep; hardcore Republican; homophobe; adulterer; two-time divorcé; frontrunner for America’s Worst Governor (Ever)
Moral apex: Impossible to choose. There’s just so much, only beginning with the 860 text messages (link deleted because there are some sources we refuse to link to any longer.) he sent (on a state-owned cell phone) to “the wife of a Reno doctor” his second wife named in her divorce suit, and stepping out with Playboy model (and ex-wife of former Reno mayor Pete Sferrazza) Leslie Durant.
So let’s start with the 2006 accusation of sexual assault:
In October 2006, near the conclusion of his successful campaign for governor, a woman accused Jim Gibbons of attempted sexual assault in a parking garage. Gibbons claimed he was helping her to her car. They both admitted to drinking alcohol at McCormick and Schmick’s restaurant in Las Vegas.In the initial aftermath of the event, Las Vegas Sheriff Bill Young, a long time supporter of Jim Gibbons and donor to his gubernatorial campaign, cited lack of evidence in the case and refused to bring evidence of the attack to the District Attorney. The accuser did not initially want to pursue pressing charges, saying she just wanted “to be left alone.” But when the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was forced to open the incident case file after inquiries by Las Vegas media, the [newspaper name redacted. - Ed.] and the Las Vegas Sun released her name and she was thrust into the public eye. She later said she was being pressured to not talk to the police about the incident by people close to Jim Gibbons. In fact, the Gibbons campaign hired a private investigator to “talk” to the woman shortly after the incident occurred.
Under pressure from the media and eventually from the accuser herself, Sheriff Bill Young famously taunted the alleged victim to “bring it on” and sign a formal complaint. This was a highly irregular step, as most victims of assault are not required to sign a complaint before an investigation can begin. Nevertheless, she signed the complaint and there was a further investigation. The evidence was given to the Las Vegas District Attorney, David Roger, who had also donated to the Gibbons campaign. Criminal charges were never filed in the case.
Gibbons’ gubernatorial campaign manager, Robert Uithoven, speculated in an e-mail to Gibbons’ supporters that Dina Titus, Gibbons’ opponent, hired the woman to entice Gibbons. Titus retorted that to do this she would have had to control where Gibbons went, who he was with, and even the weather (Gibbons claimed he was helping the woman to her car in part because of the weather).
By 2009, the alleged victim had filed a civil suit against Jim Gibbons, specifically alleging battery, false imprisonment and second-degree kidnapping as well as deceit about the episode.
A Web site called VindicateMazzeo.com offers “the story of Chrissy Mazzeo, the former Wynn Las Vegas cocktail waitress who alleges she was kidnapped and threatened with being raped by Nevada Governor james Arnold ‘Jim’ Gibbons and how Gibbons’ crimes were covered up and Mazzeo’s civil rights were violated by the combined acts and conspiracies of Gibbons, nevada [sic] king-maker Sigmond ‘Sig’ Rogich, former clark county Sheriff Bill Young, attorney Donald J. Campbell, Chrissy’s ex-best friend, Pennie Mossett-Puhek, and unknown people of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (’Metro’) and the Clark County District Attorney’s Office.”
But what’s even more fun to read are the divorce papers. Here’s just a small piece of Dawn’s motion for public proceedings:
The question to be answered by this Court, at this time, is whether or not the holder of the highest office in the State of Nevada, Governor, may make false and misleading statements to the Public he serves, regarding his activities, regarding his use of public property and resources and regarding his marital life and divorce action and then avoid exposure of those falsehoods by use of or misuse of NRS 125.110 and NRS 125.080, to conceal his deceit, which statutes, particularly when applied to him, absent a showing of very good and compelling cause are “facially Unconstitutional.” …Mrs. Gibbons has been repeatedly assailed by planted innuendo, untruths and halftruths about her and her decades long marriage, while the Plaintiff, the source of the damage to her reputation cowers behind a veil of secrecy and manufactures issues attempting to embarrass her into submission with contrived issues such as the occupancy of the Mansion. …
It is so well accepted, and so well known that Judicial Notice can easily be taken of the fact that Mr. Gibbons’ wife has been his greatest asset. She has worked relentlessly and tirelessly to advance his career, and had stood by his side, at the most critical time in his quest to be elected Governor.
For just one example, even when , after consuming copious amounts of alcohol, and under the cover of darkness, in a garage in Las Vegas, the Plaintiff was accused of assaulting a young woman, bearing a striking resemblance, to the “other woman” referenced, below, that woman, too, like his wife now, was trashed and the Public was, again, misled. …
[The Public’s right to know] is heightened when the subject of interest is one of the most if not the most scandal ridden Governor in the history of this State. And, he has only held the office for a year and a half. Mrs. Gibbons is entitled to her day in Court, in an open court, not in a secret proceeding, but a public one that will provide her with a forum in which to be publicly exonerated, and in which she can fix blame where it belongs, on the shoulders of the woman who the has, for years, stalked the man who could give her the public persona and prestige, that, apparently, she craves, and, for which she is willing to, concurrently, abandon her husband. And, he who has succumbed to the seduction of those wiles, should not be allowed to fix the blame, for the failure of the marriage, on anyone else but on the marital intruder and on himself. …
He doth protest too much that which if not true needs no rebuttal.
More juicy reading:
Gibbons’ original divorce complaint, May 2, 2008
Affidavit of Dawn Gibbons, August 21, 2008
Husband’s Reply to Wife’s Opposition to His Motion for Protective Order, January 12, 2009
Aside from the divorces and sex scandals: Just about everybody agrees that Jim Gibbons is America’s. Worst. Governor. Ever.
Un-sexy but deliciously devastatingly damning articles:
Former Employee Says Gibbons Knew of Her Illegal Status, KLAS-TV, October 25, 2006
WSJ: Gibbons Does the Donor-Favor Two-Step, TPM Muckracker, November 1, 2006
Gibbons scores a public relations coup, Las Vegas Sun, December 18, 2006
FBI probes Nevada governor for corruption, MSNBC, May 11, 2007
Where does Gibbons work? Apparently not at his desk, Las Vegas Sun, October 5, 2008
Gibbons shows little understanding of his ideology’s devastating impact, Jim Rogers, Nevada Higher Education System Chancellor, Nevada Appeal, February 22, 2009
Face of NV GOP aroused at prospect of watching legislators get teabagged, Las Vegas Gleaner, April 24, 2009
Much, much, much more at the Las Vegas Gleaner.
Memorable quotes:
Nevada state Democrats are condemning Republican Congressman Jim Gibbons (search) for saying this past week that the “tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals [in Hollywood should] … go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else,” adding, “it’s just too damn bad we didn’t buy them a ticket” to become human shields in Iraq.— Brit Hume, Fox News, March 4, 2005
“It was once said in another context that being in close quarters with such a volatile person was like being locked in a phone booth with an enraged ferret.”
— Handwritten footnote by Gibbon lawyers in motion
to kick wife out of Governor’s Mansion
“What I want to tell people is that I’m just like they are, I don’t want to be a lonely Governor.”
— Jim Gibbons to KOLO-TV, July 16, 2008
“At bottom, Wife claims that because Husband was intimate with other women he must have spent money on them. (We reiterate: sex is not relevant, only spending.)”
— Gibbons’ response to Dawn Gibbon’s claim
he was spending money on his two bits of fluff
January 12, 2009
“I just don’t believe in it.”
— Jim Gibbons on his intention to veto Nevada domestic partner bill SB283, April, 2009
Memorable observations:
Drunky McRapey … incredibly dull/stupid cretin-crook Republican congressman who somehow became governor of Nevada … scumbag … drunken lout and serial cheater … America’s worst governor and alcoholic adulterous sex-assaulter crook … drunken idiot governor … moronic alcoholic waitress-assaulting sex criminal … rat-eyed corrupt paranoid-schizophrenic alcoholic cocktail-waitress-assaulting Jim Gibbons …— A few choice epithets from Wonkette
[I]f Gibbons is elected governor, Nevada voters will have the leadership they deserve.
— Las Vegas Gleaner, February 9, 2006
It’s tempting to speculate that some portion or other of Gibbons’ emotional development stunted and stopped when he was about, oh, nine. But that would be u
nfair to nine-year-olds.— Las Vegas Gleaner, December 29, 2006
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons: He’s not just a mentally and emotionally unhinged narcissist, liar, thief, con-man, hypocrite, assaulter and slut. He’s also an ignorant homophobe.
— Las Vegas Gleaner, April 14, 2009
Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Gibbons:
I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.— Jeremiah 23:14
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