With just days left until the votes are tallied, television airwaves are clogged with attack ads referencing assault allegations against Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons.

The state Democratic Party, acting independently from the campaign of Democrat Dina Titus, is airing two commercials about the charges, both of which feature footage of the parking garage where Gibbons allegedly attacked and threatened to rape a local woman last month. The ads also feature references to cover-ups and abuses of power.

Gibbons, for his part, has fired back with an ad that combines the assertion that he's been proven innocent, although the investigation is ongoing, and a grumpy voice mail Titus left a staffer before the Aug. 15 primary, saying they combine to show Titus "will stop at nothing" with "disgusting personal attacks."

Titus spokeswoman Hilarie Grey called the Gibbons ad nonsensical, saying the combination of the Titus recording with the unsupportable claim that Titus has made "false TV ads" and the equally unsubstantiated claim of vindication for Gibbons made for a jarring mix.

"It looks like an act of desperation to me," she said.

The voice mail in question came on the eve of the primary, when apparently Titus heard one of her workers had been spotted at the headquarters of her Democratic opponent, Jim Gibson. The ad features a clip it says consists of "verbal abuse" in which Titus tells the staffer, "It's a bad choice that you have made. ... I am not happy."

Grey said the voice mail was a "very small personal situation they're trying to blow up."

The ad then states in on-screen text, "Titus produced false TV ads." Gibbons campaign manager Robert Uithoven said that was a reference to the Democrats' ads and noted that the narration over that text refers to "Titus and her liberal friends."

Grey said it was not only unfair to tie Titus to ads she had nothing to do with, but also hypocritical. Gibbons, she said, is the one who stubbornly refused to take down an ad that claimed Titus would give illegal immigrants driver's license, which she has never been quoted as saying.

The ad also claims that "Videotapes proved Gibbons is innocent." As of Thursday evening, news organizations were still scrambling to find a way to view the 16 hours of surveillance camera footage from the garage, which was handed over by Gibbons' attorney Thursday morning but was in a specialized format. The attorney, Don Campbell, said he hadn't viewed the tapes.

"How can they be so certain about the tapes proving anything if they haven't seen the tapes?" Grey said.

Uithoven defended the ad, saying it was a necessary rebuttal to the "smear campaign" waged by Titus and her allies. "The ad speaks to Dina Titus' lack of temperament and judgment," he said. "Her campaign and the campaign waged by her liberal friends has become about character assassination," rather than substantive issues.

As for the claim about the tapes, he said, "I don't need to see the tapes. We know that Jim Gibbons is not on them."

The Democrats' ads are titled "Pulling Strings" and "Lingering Questions."

"The powerful are used to taking what they want, and in the world of Washington, they usually get away with it," one states. "But cover-ups don't go down well in Nevada."

The other ad says, "Even the best cover-up leaves questions unanswered. Why has the victim become the accused? Is Jim Gibbons pulling the strings?"

Gibbons' accuser, Chrissy Mazzeo, has charged that people connected to Gibbons tried to threaten and bribe her to take back her story, but Gibbons says that's not true. Uithoven said "the insinuation that Jim Gibbons did something wrong" was unfair. "Nevada voters don't like being misled," he said.

State Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirsten Searer said the implication of a cover-up was justified because there are many unanswered questions about the case. "The question is, what has the Gibbons campaign done to try to smother the investigation?"

Searer said that it was far from clear that the tapes would prove anything. They could be incomplete, or the camera angles might not cover the whole garage, she said.

"Unlike the Gibbons campaign, I'm not going to speculate about what's on the tapes until I see them," she said. "It is misleading to voters to claim the tapes vindicate him before anyone's seen them, and it is indicative of how the Gibbons campaign has not been truthful."

University of Nevada, Las Vegas, political scientist David Damore said that especially with just days to go, anything is fair game, and anyone claiming an opponent has gone too far is unlikely to get much sympathy.

"If the shoe was on the other foot, I can only imagine what the Republicans would be coming out with," he said. "They would be going for the jugular. It would be surprising if they didn't."