Thursday, March 31, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Parties spar over Gibbons
State GOP responds to Dems' billboards
By RICHARD LAKE
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Jim Gibbons
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The Republicans are angry, and they say it's the Democrats' fault.
"We kind of feel like the Democrats are taking early, cheap shots. ... Lying and twisting the truth," Brian Scroggins, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, said at a news conference Wednesday organized to respond to recent attacks by the state Democratic Party.
In the opening salvo of next year's race for governor, the Democrats last week placed three billboards around the state attacking presumptive Republican candidate for governor Jim Gibbons.
Though Gibbons offered no response, the Republicans said Wednesday that they had no choice but to respond.
"Something had to be said. Something had to be done," said Richard Ziser, vice chairman of the state Republican Party.
The Democratic billboards -- two in Las Vegas, one in Reno -- call Gibbons a candidate unfit to be governor because of recent comments he made during a speech in Elko.
The congressman, in a speech later found to have been largely plagiarized, criticized Hollywood liberals and said, "I say we take those liberal, tree-hugging, Birken- stock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and music and whine somewhere else."
He also was quoted as saying "it's too damn bad we didn't buy them a ticket" of liberals who wanted to be human shields in Iraq.
The billboards say Gibbons wants to "use Americans as 'human shields,' " which Republicans say is taken completely out of context.
Ziser and Scroggins, who both said they attended the Elko speech, said that mischaracterizes what he meant.
He was inspired by a recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery, they said, and was saying that people who want to be human shields should respect the real human shields, our dead servicemen and women.
Democratic party spokesman Jon Summers said that is absurd, noting the speech turned out to be a repeat of a copyrighted speech given by an Alabama official in 2003.
"Jim Gibbons did say it was `too damn bad' we didn't buy people tickets who wanted to be human shields in Iraq," Summers said.
"The Democratic Party is desperate," said Scroggins. "They're willing to do anything to try and win."
