State Sen. Dina Titus at a Starbucks last week in Las Vegas talks about her bid in the 2006 governor's race. Photo by John Gurzinski.
Dina Titus smiles last week as she tours a home in Green Valley that generates its own power through solar panels. Titus' net metering legislation allows Steve and Marsala Rypka to sell unused energy the house generates back to the power company. Photo by John Gurzinski.
It began the way her speeches often do.
The words rolled off her tongue before the thought was finished, her drawl stretching out the vowels as if buying time while her mind searched for the best punch.
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"Since George Bush has been president, lives have been lost, opportunities have been lost, the surplus has been lost, jobs have been lost, allies have been lost.
"Let's tell George Bush to get lost."
Though the partisan crowd was there for challenger John Kerry's speech that Feb. 13, 2004, night at Valley High School, it was the stemwinder from a girl raised in the South that was being repeated by attendees afterward in the parking lot.
Dina Titus doesn't just have the most distinctive accent in Nevada politics; hers is arguably its most unique voice.
In the race for governor, she is not just the last liberal standing, she is standing up to the established voices who say she can't win.
"She speaks her mind and she follows through," said fellow Senate Democrat Maggie Carlton. "You can't tell her it can't be done. Just like with this race, she'll do it anyway."
Titus is not as tidy as her labels suggest: Democratic national committeewoman, Senate minority leader, university professor.
She is a high school dropout with a doctorate, a big-city liberal courting rural conservatives, a woman in a good old boy's network. Unmistakably Georgian, she hopes to be Nevada's first female governor, and a Democratic one in a red state to boot.
"You can't be too far out there and get elected in Nevada," said Titus, adding she has been facing voters for 18 years. "Saving Red Rock, that's not some kind of liberal issue. A property tax freeze is not liberal. Protecting people from sex offenders is not out there."
Alice Constandina Titus was born in Thomasville, Ga., in 1950. She grew up in Tifton, a southern Georgia agricultural town bypassed by the interstate.
Titus was raised to be her Greek family's Southern belle, with tap dance recitals, cheerleading and helping in the kitchen at her grandfather's restaurant.
But her "traditional Southern family" also dabbled in politics, with a great-grandfather who served in Congress, an uncle in the Georgia Legislature and a father who made a run for mayor of Tifton.
"I grew up in the tradition of Southern Democrats," Titus said. "That's not like a Massachusetts Democrat. I own a gun."
It's a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson, and she is happy to show you her registration card.
Titus said she got "tired of" high school but had the test scores and grades to get into the College of William and Mary without her diploma. She earned a bachelor's degree in government, followed by a master's degree from the University of Georgia and a doctorate in political science from Florida State University.
She came to Las Vegas in 1977 to teach at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Titus is a tenured political science professor and the author of two nonfiction books about nuclear waste politics and federal-state conflict in Nevada.
At UNLV, she met Tom Wright, a history professor. They have been married now 25 years.
A faculty stint in U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon's Washington office piqued Titus' interest in Democratic politics. In 1988, she filed to run for the state Senate and won.
"I decided I teach it, I study it, I love politics. I think I can bring common sense to the job."
She feels the same today, but the job is bigger than toiling in the minority in one house of the Legislature.
At times the strain of this race can be seen in her 55-year-old eyes, the weight of the challenge seeming too much for her slender frame.
On March 31, after a draining 11-10 defeat of her property tax freeze, Titus slumped over her desk as she reviewed notes in her second-floor Carson City office long after her staff and the daylight had gone.
"Is anybody going out for a drink?" she asked a reporter while removing her glasses. "I could use one."
Uninvited to that night's capital bar scene, she also was unwelcome in the governor's race by the same cadre of lobbyists and consultants. It's not a new obstacle for Titus.
In 2001, she considered running for Congress, but Sen. Harry Reid backed County Commissioner Dario Herrera. Then she considered the Clark County Commission, but Reid's son Rory was out raising money and freezing others out of the race.
On the eve of the general election in 2002, Titus said she would run for governor four years out regardless of -- and, in fact, because of -- the other Democrats who said they would run: Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins and Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson.
"I've been waiting for this for 18 years," she said. "I'm more than ready."
Perkins had the right connections to inspire fear in another candidate: support from gaming and help from campaign powerhouse R&R Partners. He was following the anointment model used by both Gov. Kenny Guinn and Bob Miller in which donors would fail to support the other candidates.
But a funny thing happened on the way to freezing Titus out of the race this time. She kept campaigning, her polls started improving, and the money started coming.
"She's been running in front," said Michael Green, a history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada. "She's been out there when Perkins, at the time, and Gibson have been getting it together."
Perkins dropped out of the race last month and said a three-way primary was impossible to win with enough resources left to take on Congressman Jim Gibbons, the Republican candidate with the best poll numbers and biggest war chest.
"I think with Perkins' decision not to run, she clearly has been in the race and would have to be seen as a front-runner on the Democratic side," said Fred Lokken, a political science professor at Truckee-Meadows Community College.
In Titus' mind, she will start to raise credible cash thanks to small donations coming in through her Web site and from a recent endorsement by pro-choice group, EMILY's List.
Because money begets money, she also thinks she will have enough money left to take on Gibbons after the primary.
Several political observers said the primary is hers to lose.
"As much as I admire Jim Gibson, I don't see how he can get out of the primary," said consultant Terry Murphy, a friend and business colleague of the mayor. "The people who will vote in a Democratic primary in the middle of August are not likely to vote for him unless he can establish some real Democratic bona fides."
Democratic consultant Dan Hart said that if Titus were not running, Democrats and moderate Republicans would "flock to Gibson."
Though Titus will have a core constituency in the primary, Hart said, it will be interesting to see whether Gibson can make up ground running as the one in a better position to defeat Gibbons, the congressman.
Gibson has yet to announce his bid formally and has not stated any positions on statewide issues. But several factors give Democrats pause: his stance on abortion and donations he gave to ballot Question 2, the initiative that amended the state's constitution to ban gay marriage.
Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie, D-Reno, was a Perkins supporter. She is interested in learning more about Gibson but said she does not think he will do very well among Washoe County primary voters.
"The average northern Democrat will not vote in a primary for an anti-choice, anti-gay candidate," Leslie said. "Democrats up here are very pro-choice and equal-rights oriented. I don't care how much money they throw at Democrats up here. He can buy name recognition, but he's a negative to a lot of things that Democrats care about as their core values."
Titus is trying to define Gibson for voters before he announces. Last week at a labor convention in Reno, she said little distinguishes Gibson from Gibbons.
"With all due respect, Jim Gibson represents politics as usual. I do not believe you can beat Gibbons with Gibbons lite," she told the Nevada AFL-CIO.
"As Harry Truman once said, if you give people a real Republican and a fake Republican, they'll choose the real Republican every time," she added.
Greg Bortolin, the Gibson campaign spokesman, downplayed the criticism.
"That's indicative of someone who's not been able to get her party out of the minority," Bortolin said. "Richard Perkins and (Senate Majority Leader) Bill Raggio were the two leaders of the Legislature. If you're not in charge, you can't claim accomplishments as a leader."
Gibbons' spokesman, Robert Uithoven, said Titus "is certainly more liberal than mainstream voters in the state are."
He said she will have to address past votes and statements.
In her first legislative session in 1989, Titus became a leading supporter for Clark County's position in the fair-share debate. Before she went to Carson City, she said she wanted to take on the "Comstock Lode mentality."
During debate on a bill to divvy up tax revenues that had gone to Washoe County erroneously, she said: "For years, Washoe County has been a sponge just soaking up the income that's been earned by the blood and sweat of miners, gamblers, ranchers throughout the rest of the state. They don't want taxes. They don't want growth. They just want a handout."
At the time, Raggio, the Senate Republican leader, warned the statement would come back to haunt someone who wanted to seek statewide office.
"I was fighting for my constituents, and I will fight just as hard for the whole state," Titus said last week in an interview.
She describes her legislative agenda -- proposing the "ring around the valley" to limit growth and strengthening development standards in the Red Rock National Recreation Area -- as appealing to northern voters, who tend to be more concerned about the environment.
Titus is convinced she will win the primary and will have momentum to take on Gibbons, who in her scenario survives a contentious primary with state Sen. Bob Beers and Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt.
Democratic consultant Billy Vassiliadis, who had been advising Perkins, said he can see Titus' scenario but thinks Gibson could have a better chance of beating Gibbons.
"I think the 'I'm the guy to beat Jim Gibbons' is one message that could work," Vassiliadis said. "Philosophically, partisan pure governor candidates aren't typically the ones who win here."
That has been the case for more than 20 years.
Guinn, who is term-limited, is a moderate Republican who proposed $1 billion in taxes. Former Gov. Miller was a pro-life Democrat. And former Gov. Richard Bryan was considered a moderate Democrat, but when he went to Congress, he voted against President Clinton's tax increases.
Democratic consultant Mike Sullivan said such examples make it hard for him to see how Titus can win the general election.
"I think Dina's very, very good, but I'm just not sure how she beats Jim Gibbons," said Sullivan, a former Perkins aide. "I'm not going to say she can't, but I don't see how she brings the kind of Democrat who will vote for George Bush to the table."
Titus thinks she knows how. She is campaigning like crazy throughout rural Nevada and not just during the Labor Day weekend festival circuit.
Though the state is evenly split between Republican and Democratic voters, rural Nevada's 145,000 voters decided the presidential election. Besides being markedly different from Clark and Washoe, the state's remaining 15 counties have the greatest concentration of Republicans, more than 75,000 of them.
And although her accent might remind people she is not a native, as Gibson and Gibbons are, she contends it helps her in Winnemucca and Ely and with the 50 people she met in the far corner of Nye County in a place called Railroad Valley.
"It disarms the notion that I'm from Las Vegas, that I'm from the ivory tower," she said. "I'm just one of the folks."
She is talking the right lingo: the language of water, of limiting government intrusion and of renewable energy for economic development.
Rural Nevada is concerned not just about Las Vegas taking their water but about their lifestyle changing as communities such as Fernley and Minden -- where Titus announced her candidacy -- grow out of their beginnings.
Titus is eyeing the Democratic women who have won in red states, Janet Napolitano in Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas.
"They didn't win by trying to be like their Republican opponent," Titus said. "They won by giving the people something new and exciting that they could grab a hold of.
"If you put Gibbons and Gibson on the same stage and have them debate, people can't even say their names without stumbling. They look alike, they sound alike, they think alike. How's that going to look?"
Two weekends ago, Titus was in Pioche on a Saturday. She changed her clothes in the car on the way back to Las Vegas for an education awards dinner. The next morning she hit the black churches in the urban Las Vegas core and then flew to Reno for the AFL-CIO reception. She spoke to the union's convention Monday, met with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Reno, raised money in Lake Tahoe and flew home to teach her two classes on Tuesday.
