Gov. Jim Gibbons took a junket from one battlefield to another

The embattled chief executive, mired in the middle of a budget crisis with numerous political brushfires, including his pending divorce case heating up the landscape, last week decided it was a good time to leave Carson City and fly to Iraq to meet and greet Nevada’s dedicated troops.

Once he was in Iraq and Kuwait, Gibbons took time to conduct interviews with some — not all — representatives of Nevada’s media outlets. That’s an awfully expensive sound bite in tough economic times, but surely the spirits of Nevada’s approximately 140 Army and Air National Guard members were bolstered.

Meanwhile, back in Nevada, the war for the state’s economic future continues. The governor was set to return from Iraq on Thursday.

I wonder if he’ll do something about a certain someone still residing in the Governor’s Mansion.

THE HOUSE GUEST: Not everyone leaves town when the going gets tough. In fact, it’s clear first lady Dawn Gibbons doesn’t intend to leave at all, despite the fact her husband has filed for divorce. Through her attorney Cal Dunlap, Mrs. Gibbons is fighting to remain on the grounds of the mansion in the guesthouse.

Can this arrangement get any nuttier?

I can almost hear the mansion tour guide now: “On your left is a portrait of James Nye, Nevada’s first governor. And if you look quickly to your right on the front porch of the guesthouse, you’ll spot the first lady in her bathrobe picking up the morning newspaper.”

At least Mrs. G hasn’t been forced to move under the staircase like a ghost in a romance novel, or a character from “The Munsters.”

What would the neighbors say?

ELKO EDITORIAL: If the governor hoped for a hometown advantage from the Elko Daily Free Press, he must have been sorely disappointed with the newspaper on Wednesday when it published an editorial taking the first lady’s side in the couple’s pending divorce action under the headline: “First lady abandoned, but still devoted.” The editorial refers to the state’s chief executive as “our scandal-laden governor.”

The paragraph that is sure to pique the interest of those following the Carson City “Peyton Place” is as follows:

“The governor has been involved with the wife of a Reno doctor. She shall go unnamed to save her husband public humiliation. Team Gibbons will say she’s simply a friend. A friend he spends an inordinate amount of time with, a friend who asked her husband for a divorce a few months before the governor dropped the bomb on Dawn — and a friend who looks a lot like a certain Las Vegas cocktail waitress that accused Jim Gibbons of assaulting her in a hotel parking garage in 2006, when he was locked in a tight gubernatorial battle with Democratic state Sen. Dina Titus.”

Something tells me Gibbons will leave this one off his next campaign mailer.

APPLE FOR TEACHER: Career teachers should get more than packing boxes and a pension when they retire. Eight years ago, teacher Jenny Kucan and some friends decided to do something about it. They created a luncheon to honor Clark County School District veterans who were retiring their chalk and erasers.

The eighth annual retired teacher appreciation luncheon will take place June 7 at the MGM Grand.

By Las Vegas standards, it’s a time-honored tradition.

ON THE BOULEVARD: Paging Miss Manners with an etiquette question.

Assemblywoman Francis Allen, R-Las Vegas, was arrested Saturday and charged with stabbing her husband of six weeks, Paul Maineri, in the left forearm with a steak knife. The wound took three stitches to close, and Allen was charged with felony battery with the use of a deadly weapon.

We all know relationships are difficult, especially after the billing and cooing degrades into slashing and gouging. It’s like T.S. Eliot once wrote, “In spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of a good self-defense class.”

Truly, I can’t make too much of this. There but for the grace of quick reflexes go I.

My etiquette question: Does this mean the happy couple won’t be able to return the wedding cutlery gift now that it’s been used?

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