Wednesday, June 28, 2006 | 7:25 a.m.
Quite often in political campaigns, advertisements so twist and distort who a candidate is that the person becomes unrecognizable.
This will happen many times in Campaign '06, which makes the first two negative commercials of the Democratic primary for governor so out of place.
Rarely have two 30-second ads so captured the essence of two candidates, with very little distortion employed and much illumination accomplished. If the race were to end today, the stark choice would have been made clear by these commercials for Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson and state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus.
Gibson struck first on TV with an ad targeting a Northern Nevada audience, a perfect example of quotes being brandished to inflict what could be substantial damage.
In 1991, at the height of what was once known as the "fair share battle" between the North and the South, Titus took to the Senate floor to lambaste Renoites. "Washoe County has been a sponge, just soaking up the income that's been earned by the blood and sweat of the remainder of the state. They don't want growth; they want handouts."
Then, in 1997, shortly after floods ravaged the North, Titus told the Sun:
"You know, there are rascals up North. We want to be sure that what we pay for is what was really damaged, that we aren't putting in some improvements that weren't there before the flood."
Gibson has resurrected these statements as part of a campaign to show Titus is "Wrong for Northern Nevada." And the quotes perfectly encapsulate her: passionate and clever, with a sprinkle of nastiness.
And always - always - a Southern partisan, as fervent a critic of Northern and rural legislators' stranglehold on Carson City appropriations as ever there was and never fearful to speak up about it.
That is who she has been, and there is one more quality that this ad captures: her propensity to grab short-term political points at the expense of long-term gain. You can be sure in 1991 and 1997, Dina Titus was not thinking about running for governor, because she is justifiably being forced to eat those intemperate words now.
And when you can't really dispute the veracity of an opponent's ad, you have no choice but to change the subject, which is what Titus did in her response ad that began airing this week in Northern Nevada.
The spot touts Titus' indisputable efforts to try to increase education funding, isolate sexual predators and protect seniors from identity theft - not to mention her support for a Truckee River restoration bill (see, she does love Northern Nevada, at least sometimes).
But that litany comes after a couple of comments about Gibson - first noting that he "was celebrating" at President Bush's inauguration last year and the second asserting that he was "promising his Republican friends that he would work to outlaw abortion."
The latter is a reference to Gibson's infamous statement on "Face to Face" last October - one he tried to step away from later - in which he declared: "I'm never going to put myself in a position where the things that I really think and believe are at odds with what we would enact. I believe abortion is an alternative in the circumstances (rape, incest, the life of the mother) I described . And that would be the kind of legislation, if it ever came to that, and I don't even imagine it will, that that's a position I would take. I want people to know that. I have not hidden that."
This part of the ad captures Gibson in a nutshell: a Democrat who consorts with Republicans (he endorsed Gov. Kenny Guinn and gave money to Rep. Jon Porter) and one who is pro-life and might let those views influence him as governor.
Those qualities are antithetical to the positions of many Democratic primary voters and represent Gibson's problem trying to navigate his way to a victory on Aug. 15. And the commentary in the ad is fair game, just as Gibson's exhumation of quotes past is legitimate, too.
If only all the commercials about to inundate the airwaves were so trenchant about the candidates - inadvertently or not.
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