Gov. Jim Gibbons held a press conference yesterday to announce his priorities for the end of this legislative session while suggesting he might very well veto any budget bill which didn’t include them. Actually, Gibbons told legislative Republicans what he had in mind the day before in a private meeting. But the details somehow got leaked to the press and appeared in print yesterday morning…before the Governor’s press conference. How’d that happen?
Well, according to one source, Republican Assembly Minority Leader Garn Mabey immediately left the private GOP briefing Tuesday afternoon and headed for Democrat Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley’s office to snitch on the Governor. I think in some quarters that’s still called being a stool pigeon.
In addition, Mabey is said to have said that if the session doesn’t end on time, he’ll just quit, pack his bags and go home. He says he’s tired of people like Gov. Gibbons, Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio and yours truly not giving him enough respect or letting him play in our reindeer games.
It gets worse. Mabey then told the press that fellow Republican Gov. Gibbons was wrong to threaten to veto the budget, adding that he doubted he could control his caucus and sustain such a veto if it happens. He also chastised the governor publicly, telling the Las Vegas Review-Journal yesterday that Gibbons should have explained his priorities “six weeks ago, so we could have gotten more sense of where the governor stood.”
This in addition to saying he supports some tax and/or fee hikes this session and that Democrat Speaker Barbara Buckley’s “plan for more full-day kindergarten is good.” Oh, and by the way, he’s STILL refusing to bring the Governor’s proposal to fund highway construction without a tax hike forward as a bill using his special “emergency” power as Minority Leader in the Assembly.
When push comes to shove, however, Mabey says he’ll just go along with whatever Gibbons, Buckley and Raggio “work out.”
What a Republican. What a leader. What a conservative.
What a schlemiel.
Repeat after me: Garn’s Gotta Go. Garn’s Gotta Go. Garn’s Gotta Go. And if you haven’t yet signed our online petition to Assembly Republicans telling them just that, click here and add your name to the growing list.
Posted on May 24th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
Chuck,
Instead of killing the messenger, let’s focus on the 4 items the governor is willing to go to the mat on. Go ahead, focus on them. They are bullshit issues.