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Governor wants back in mansion: Court battle brewing as Gibbons seeks to oust wife from official residence

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 12:44 PM PDT

Jim Gibbons

Dawn Gibbons

CARSON CITY (AP) - The state that pioneered the quickie divorce is witnessing a potentially ugly breakup that has the governor of Nevada fighting to get back into his own mansion.

Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons filed for divorce last week after moving out of the 23-room official residence. With his wife, Dawn, now ensconced in the Governor's Mansion, he has gone to court to have her evicted so that he can move back.

Entire sitcoms have been built on less. And many Nevadans are fascinated by the whole spectacle.

“This isn't a tourist attraction, but it's certainly an attraction,” said Michael Green, a history professor at the College of Southern Nevada.

A popular liberal blogger, Hugh Jackson of lasvegasgleaner.com, has gleefully declared, “Gibbons vs. Gibbons: Let's get ready to rumble!” and has taken the opportunity to re-post photos of Gibbons partying on a cruise with a crowd of women.

With a judge sealing most of the records Monday at the governor's request, the blogosphere is full of rumors about why Gibbons, 63, wants a divorce. He is not talking publicly, and his 54-year-old wife has said she has no idea why he wants to end their marriage of nearly 22 years.

The divorce case - and the potential political fallout - are the latest in a series of difficulties for the first-term governor, including a corruption investigation by the FBI, still under way, and claims by a Las Vegas cocktail waitress that he assaulted her in a parking garage after she rebuffed his advances just before his 2006 election.

Police last year said they found insufficient evidence to support the waitress' claim. But during the furor, Dawn Gibbons literally stood by her husband and resolutely defended him, lending critical support at a supremely perilous moment in his career.

Gibbons moved out of the mansion - a 1908 structure with fluted white Ionic columns, wraparound verandas and a grand, Greek Revival-style portico - sometime earlier this year and returned to the couple's modest, four-bedroom house about 25 miles away in Reno, which is appropriate, given the way Nevada turned the phrase “I'm going to Reno!” into a 1940s euphemism for divorce.

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