reality-based educator

The Jerry Weller/16 year old page scandal STILL hasn't broke yet (much to Wonkette's chagrin), but I think the Republican candidate for governor of Nevada, Congressman Jim Gibbons, can hang up his silver studs and officially concede:

Perhaps it was the innocent encounter that Rep. Jim Gibbons has described. Nevertheless, the story the Gibbons campaign has been telling about what happened last Friday night at the Hughes Center differs from what Gibbons told police Saturday when they interviewed him about an alleged assault, according to the police reports released Wednesday.

Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, accused Gibbons, the Republican candidate for governor, of pushing her against the wall in a parking garage and making an unwanted sexual advance.

She said she cursed him and ran from the garage to a La Quinta Inn across Paradise Road before taking refuge in a Starbucks restroom.

There, she made the first of what police now say were three - not two as police had said - calls to 911 to report an assault. On a recording, she is heard gasping. Police have said that the gasps are laughter. In fact, she is heard telling the dispatcher that she is breathless from running.

The next day she told police she decided to drop the matter "mainly because of who he is ... I just don't want to go up against something like that." She did not recant her story, as the Gibbons campaign had claimed.

Gibbons told police that Mazzeo had slipped while walking in or near the parking garage and that he was merely helping her up. Gibbons and Mazzeo do agree that once Gibbons touched her, the hunt for her car ended and they went their separate ways.

...

This discrepancy, as well as others in the police reports, can only deepen a growing political problem for the five-term congressman just days before early voting begins.

Mazzeo didn't return a phone call and didn't respond when a reporter knocked on her door Wednesday. She told police she is a cancer survivor and a single mother with a 3-year-old child.

Gibbons has yet to speak publicly about the incident. The campaign hasn't produced any of the other people at the restaurant who might talk about the incident or might have seen Gibbons help the woman.

The only response from the campaign Wednesday was the following statement: "Jim Gibbons is campaigning today as scheduled in Mesquite and Laughlin. Just as Metro and several eyewitnesses in and around the restaurant have concluded, Jim Gibbons did nothing wrong or inappropriate."

Sheriff Bill Young, who originally called the episode a misunderstanding and whose department took five days to identify the woman publicly and release records of the incident, called Mazzeo's story to police "a pretty damaging report. But once an alleged victim declines to prosecute, we're pretty much done with it."

Young, who has endorsed Gibbons, also defended the department: "We weren't on a witch hunt against the congressman, but we also weren't covering up anything.

"We're not going to be dragged into the middle of it," Young said. "He's a congressman and he's in a heated political race. It's up to the parties to defend their positions from here on out."

How's that for republican family values? And here's the kicker: Representative Gibbons' wife, Dawn Gibbons, is running to replace the congressman in his district.

I wonder what it's like following the Gibbonses on their respective campaign trails?

Gibbons had been leading by 9 points in the last poll before the "unfortunate incident." Wonkette notes that the sexual assault and attempted murder allegations made by the woman against Congressman Gibbons should assure his Democratic rival, Dina Titus, a win on November 7th "If she can avoid threatening to rape and kill people between now and Election Day."