Dawn Gibbons’ support of Reid no laughing matter

It must have been a joke, right?

Republican and former first lady Dawn Gibbons on Wednesday endorsed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid over his conservative challenger, Sharron Angle. I mean, there has to be a punch line in there somewhere, don't you think? At least, that's what conservatives have been saying.

Gibbons must have a vendetta against Angle, they surmise. Or perhaps this was some once-removed form of payback against her ex-husband, Gov. Jim Gibbons, following their nasty divorce. Or maybe she was just carrying water on behalf of her new employer, television station owner and Reid supporter James Rogers.

All quite possible in Nevada.

It couldn't be that former Republican Assemblywoman Dawn Gibbons looked at the playing field and decided Reid was better for education in the state than Angle. That would be too, well, obvious.

Whatever the motives behind the endorsement, Gibbons proved she can still gather a gaggle of reporters and charm a political dog-and-pony show when she denounced Angle as too extreme for prime time. She minimized the divorce one-liners but spared Angle not a bit.

With UNLV students as backdrop at the Houssels Multicultural Center on campus, Gibbons lauded Reid as a husband, family man and political titan who has done much for the state and whose clout in Washington on behalf of "a very small state" is too important to do without.

The response from conservative circles was to ridicule Gibbons. She was dismissed as a Republican In Name Only, a bitter grudge-holder, a woman scorned. Sure, it smacked of chauvinism, but she was undeterred and made a repeat performance Thursday in Reno.

Gibbons was never a political heavyweight, but neither was Angle until her primary victory earlier this year. Gibbons also ran third in the 2006 congressional primary behind Angle and winner Dean Heller. The idea that she has been brooding the past four years because she didn't beat Angle for second is pretty silly.

Gibbons served in the Legislature as a middle-of-the-road Republican. It's not surprising she would decline to endorse true-believer conservative Angle. If anything, it shows the challenge facing Nevada's GOP.

Is that all Gibbons' support means?

Not if it's one of several endorsements of Reid by high-profile Republicans in the coming weeks.

Speaking of endorsements, former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf also endorsed Reid. He told Review-Journal gaming reporter Howard Stutz, "The question is, are you better off having the majority leader of the Senate, who can control what gets to the floor to be voted on, or a freshman senator?"

For Gaming Inc., that's precisely the question.

Sure, Fahrenkopf and Reid have known each other half a century. Conservatives can claim the longstanding friendship is behind it.

Then again, Fahrenkopf could feel compelled to back Reid out of some implied threat. Reid is known for playing political hardball, right?

Trouble with that rusty rhetoric is, Reid and Angle are in a dead heat. The best way to beat him is to have major players in Nevada business stand up and say they are supporting Angle's "small government" candidacy.

Laughing off the former first lady is easy. But only a fool would call Fahrenkopf a lightweight.

It's no secret the Reid campaign wants to paint Angle as too extreme to be politically effective. The two best ways to do that, in my opinion, are to use her own words against her and to have well-known Republicans say publicly that they are compelled to endorse the Democrat.

In a race in which, as the ancient Chinese might say, a single grain of rice could tip the scale, the Gibbons endorsement is a story, not a joke. An endorsement by Fahrenkopf is a story, too.

Now, if Angle can get the endorsements of Bonnie Bryan and Sandy Miller ...

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 702-383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.