Almost a week later, viewers of Monday night's introductory gubernatorial debate still might be trying to figure out which way is up.
Republican Jim Gibbons and Democrat Dina Titus accused each other of lying. Both threw figures and buzzwords around like apple seeds. It was enough to make an average person's head spin -- which probably was the candidates' aim.
So, where was the truth?
Each candidate uttered at least one demonstrable falsehood, from slips of the tongue to statements of fact that weren't. Both made plenty of remarks that stretched the truth. And many of the points they tried to make were just debatable.
What follows is a roundup of some of what was said in the debate and whether it holds up in the light of day.
Titus: "No, I'm not talking about raising taxes." Gibbons: "No, I do not intend to raise taxes."
Gibbons spent much of the debate trying to make a case that Titus will raise taxes in Nevada. Since that's a prediction about a hypothetical future, it can't be proven.
The two statements make it sound like neither candidate wants to commit to either raising or not raising taxes. Their statements in other venues have been clearer. Titus says she won't raise taxes if she doesn't think it's necessary, but if there are state programs she believes need to be funded, she thinks that's more important than keeping taxes at existing levels.
Gibbons also was less than definitive in the debate. But in an interview with the Review-Journal recently, he definitively uttered the words, "No new taxes."
Gibbons: "The Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative worked in 2003. ... My opponent opposed it."
Titus was quoted in 1993 as an opponent of Gibbons' constitutional amendment ballot initiative, which, when it took effect in 1996, required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to raise taxes.
But can the initiative be said to have worked in 2003? In that rough-and-tumble legislative battle, 15 members of the state Assembly refused to agree to the proposed gross receipts tax, leading to two special sessions. Because Nevada's Constitution requires that the budget be balanced, the education budget legislators wanted to pass couldn't go through until there was enough revenue -- from taxes -- to support it.
Amid the deadlock, the state Supreme Court ruled that the constitution's provision requiring education funding trumped the Gibbons amendment, and taxes could be raised with a simple majority. However, one of the 15 holdout Assembly members switched sides to support a modified tax plan, so two-thirds was achieved anyway.
But, with the two-thirds requirement essentially nullified by the court decision -- since reversed -- Gibbons introduced a new ballot initiative, Education First, which would force the Legislature to budget education before anything else to prevent it being "held hostage" as it was in 2003.
Gibbons campaign manager Robert Uithoven said that didn't constitute an acknowledgement that the tax-restraint initiative failed. "The Gibbons Tax Restraint Initiative does not promise no new taxes; it promises to make them harder to pass. Anybody involved in the 2003 session will tell you that it wasn't easy to raise taxes."
Gibbons: "You eventually and initially opposed the 2003 taxpayer rebate proposed by Senator Beers and Governor Guinn, calling it a pipe dream."
The $300 million rebate on car taxes actually came in 2005. Initially, Titus didn't say she was against the rebate, just that she didn't think there'd be room for it in the budget. In April 2005, she used the words "pipe dream," saying too many other things needed to be funded.
Eventually, Titus came around. The Senate, including Titus, approved the rebate unanimously.
Titus: Gibbons' votes led to "a record four-hundred-and-fifty-thousand billion dollar deficit."
An obvious slip of the tongue, Titus was referring to Gibbons' vote in favor of raising the federal debt limit by $450 billion, to $6.4 trillion, a record at the time. She actually makes two errors here -- a thousand billion is a trillion, and deficit is different than debt. Deficit is how much more a government spends than it takes in in a given year. Debt is how much government owes other entities in total -- the piling up of annual deficits over the years. The national debt currently is about $8.5 trillion, a record.
Titus: "There is a 'DREAM Act' in Congress ... to try to help the children of undocumented people who have lived here their whole lives to go to college."
Titus was responding to a debate question that asked whether illegal immigrants should be admitted to colleges and universities. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, Act would allow illegal immigrants who came to the country as young children and meet other requirements to get in-state tuition and state and federal grants to go to college, while also helping them become citizens. It is part of the stalled immigration bill that passed the U.S. Senate. Titus supports this concept, her campaign said.
Asked for his position on the matter, Gibbons took a similar stance.
Gibbons "does recognize that instances may exist where perhaps a young child is brought into our country and Nevada illegally," but then learns English, gets good grades and earns the Millennium Scholarship while also trying to gain legal status, Uithoven said. "Should (the scholarship) be taken away from such a person? If the Legislature votes to approve such a restriction, it would be wise to make sure it does not affect current scholarship recipients."
Gibbons: "Believe me, there's a big difference between guest worker program, which my opponent supports, called amnesty, and the word amnesty, which I do not support in immigration reform. I just firmly believe that in order to protect individuals, we're giving scholarships out for universities, and we'll continue to work at our universities but make sure that our laws are upheld, whether they're city, state or federal."
This was Gibbons' answer to the same debate question -- whether illegal immigrants should be admitted to colleges and universities -- and its incomprehensibility epitomizes both candidates' attempts to soft-shoe around the hot-button immigration issue. Gibbons appeared to be trying to emphasize the word "amnesty" and link it to Titus, while also emphasizing the concepts of security and lawfulness, the Republicans' buzzwords on immigration.
Gibbons' position on immigration is that of the hard-line border security bill that passed the U.S. House last year and led to massive demonstrations. He supports a guest worker program but not a provision that would allow those who entered the country illegally a way to become U.S. citizens.
Titus, like most Democrats, believes illegal immigrants should have a "path to citizenship" that lets them become citizens after many years and after clearing hurdles such as paying a fine and back taxes.
Titus: "I stood on a similar stage as this before the Latin Chamber and heard the congressman say that he would look at and consider the Utah plan that gives driver's licenses to undocumenteds, and he said he would support a worker program."
Titus has several times repeated the assertion that Gibbons came out in favor of the Utah plan at a Sept. 15 forum at the Las Vegas Latin Chamber of Commerce, but it's just not true. A review of the tape of Gibbons' 15-minute speech reveals that he never used the word "Utah" or otherwise referred to that state's solution to the problem of illegal immigrants and driver's licenses. Gibbons actually said he'd consider the Utah plan in a private interview with the Review-Journal at which Titus was not present.
Titus also misrepresents the Utah plan, which was created specifically to not give illegal immigrants driver's licenses. Undocumented immigrants in Utah can get "driving privileges" cards that do not serve as valid identification for any other purpose, such as boarding airplanes.
Gibbons: "(At the Latin Chamber) I did not agree to it (driver's licenses for illegals). I would not agree to it. I would not give them amnesty for their driver's license as my opponent did."
Gibbons was less than tough on illegal immigration in his Latin Chamber speech. He didn't mention opposing amnesty. He said he was open to listening on the driver's license issue. He said that "those who come to seek freedom and opportunity should be given the same legal rights as everybody else"; and he extolled the importance of bilingual nurses.
Gibbons is also misrepresenting Titus' position on driver's licenses for illegals, as does an attack ad he is airing on television. Titus has never been quoted as saying she favors driver's licenses for illegals; she has a record of opposing them, and there's no evidence she's ever changed her position.
Titus: "I sponsored legislation to allow the importation of drugs from Canada; he voted against it three times."
Titus did sponsor Nevada's bill creating a Web site and oversight for Canadian pharmacies to sell less expensive brand-name drugs to consumers. As for Gibbons, this is a case where legislators who cast thousands of votes can have their records used to support both sides of an argument.
Gibbons did vote against three measures -- two in 2003 and one in May 2006 -- that supported drug reimportation. The latter was a vote against prohibiting the Food and Drug Administration from acting to stop reimportation.
But between 2000 and 2005, Gibbons voted for 12 bills that included reimportation provisions, and he cast another such vote Friday. Gibbons says he is firmly in favor of reimportation from Canada but not from countries whose safety controls he doesn't trust. One of his votes against reimportation cited by Titus would have allowed drugs from Israel, Liechtenstein and South Africa.
Gibbons: "Today, the state Legislature funds higher ed at about 86 percent, and only 16 percent is endowments and grants."
In another apparent slip of the tongue, Gibbons cited figures that add up to 102 percent. He also didn't include the third major source of university funding: student tuition. His campaign was unable to come up with the precise figures he meant to quote or say where he got his numbers.
According to the Nevada System of Higher Education, in the fiscal year that ended in July, 77 percent of the system's operating budget came from state appropriations. Student tuition and fees accounted for 21 percent, with just 2 percent coming from miscellaneous other sources including federal funds.
But the point Gibbons went on to make -- that Nevada should push to make other sources foot more of the higher education bill -- is a good one, said Mike Reed, the system's vice chancellor of finance. The university system is mounting a long-term push to increase its monies from grants and contracts, currently a lower percentage of the higher education budget than in most other states.
Titus: "All of the studies show" that all-day kindergarten improves student performance and reduces dropout rates."
As with so many controversial issues, there are competing studies, with some arguing that all-day kindergarten is actually bad for kids because it pushes them beyond what they're ready for. Others say all-day kindergarten's benefits haven't been fully proven, including Gibbons, whose position is that Nevada's pilot program needs to be assessed before he can decide whether to expand it.
According to an early education expert, the academic consensus is that full-day kindergarten is a good thing. But, "it's a matter of debate how good a thing it is," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research and a professor at Rutgers University. "Some people say the effects are small. Some people say they're remarkable."
To date, there has been no scientifically rigorous trial on the effects of full-day versus half-day kindergarten, Barnett said. However, Barnett conducted a study on full-day versus half-day preschool that he believes serves as a parallel, and it found significant effects that continued to multiply in ensuing years.
Titus: "He voted against the (federal) constitutional amendment, but then changed his mind and voted for the constitutional amendment, to outlaw gay marriages."
Gibbons' flip-flop on this issue is undeniable. He voted against it in 2004, but for it in July, drawing fire from both Democrats and Republicans for the switch. He said he had come to believe a federal amendment was necessary to guard against activist judges striking down state bans.
However, Titus' position on this issue is far from clear. Her campaign last week refused to answer whether she believed same-sex partners should be allowed to marry or where she stood on Nevada's amendment banning gay marriage, saying only that Titus believes the amendment settled the matter in Nevada.
"Gay marriage is not an issue for Nevada at this time," Titus spokeswoman Hilarie Grey said. But it was Titus who brought up gay marriage in the debate.
Titus: "Thanks to the congressman, who serves on several homeland security committees, in Congress we have had our funding slashed. We have been moved off that list as a high target area, and we are not receiving the funding that we need. ... That is a crying shame, and it is the congressman's fault."
Gibbons: "If I'm responsible for it being cut, then I guess I'm responsible for the $28 million that's already made you safer and more secure and helped train our first responders."
In the spring, Las Vegas officials found out the city had been dropped off the federal government's list of 35 cities considered to be at the highest risk of terrorist attacks and eligible for extra funding. Previously, Las Vegas was receiving $8.5 million based on its urban-area risk status.
State and local leaders applied for extra funding for Las Vegas under a different funding provision, and the city ended up getting $7.75 million in addition to the state's $20.5 million allotment.
Gibbons' numbers are about right this time, but the question of responsibility is more nebulous. He has said that being dropped from the list was an executive branch decision he wasn't included in, and he acted to reverse it as soon as he knew about it.
Metropolitan Police Department Capt. Kathleen Suey of the force's Homeland Security Bureau said she would give Gibbons neither credit nor blame. As for who got the funding back, Suey said, "Sheriff Young was extremely instrumental in pushing this forward."
