It just seems those R's can't keep their hands to themselves

[dajoki]

WP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/31/AR2006103100869.html

Scandal Rocks Nevada Governor's Race

By SCOTT SONNER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 31, 2006; 8:54 PM

RENO, Nev. -- Nevada's race for governor was barely a contest at all until it took a scandalous turn a few weeks ago, when a cocktail waitress accused Rep. Jim Gibbons of trying to sexually assault her in a parking garage after a night of drinking just off the Las Vegas Strip.

The lurid allegations in the closing weeks of the campaign have put the race back in play and put the one-time Republican front-runner on the defensive. Policy issues have taken a back seat to dueling news conferences, a burgeoning criminal investigation and a mystery over what exactly is on the parking garage's surveillance video.

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"Certainly the race must be tighter than they anticipated because it should have been a cakewalk ... for Gibbons, and now we have the president coming to Elko," said Fred Lokken, a Republican and political science professor at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno.

It was three weeks before Election Day when 32-year-old Chrissy Mazzeo made three 911 calls after leaving a Las Vegas restaurant where she had been drinking with a friend, the married congressman, his top adviser and others. Alternately breathless and laughing, the single mother who recently left the Wynn Las Vegas hotel-casino to work at the Bellagio hotel-casino told police that Gibbons grabbed her arms and tried to force himself on her.

Gibbons told police it didn't happen. He said he walked Mazzeo toward her truck and helped her catch her balance after she tripped at the garage entrance. At a news conference with his wife at his side, he insisted he had behaved like "an officer and a gentleman."