Nevada governor wants his mansion back and his wife out

The Nevada Appeal in Carson City said in an editorial that the governor should be the one living in the mansion -unless "they change its name to the First Lady's Mansion."

"Dawn Gibbons should leave and let the taxpayers' representative do our business in our mansion. If she wants to live there, she should get elected governor or live with the one we've got," Sid Goodman of Las Vegas wrote in a letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

Gibbons press secretary Ben Kieckhefer has described the move back to Reno as a temporary situation and said there is no violation of the law.

Dawn Gibbons told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she didn't ask Gibbons to move out, and that she has been trying "to make sure my marriage works." She also said she wants to continue performing her duties as first lady and needs to be in the mansion because that is her office and where her staff works.

Besides attending ceremonial functions, the first lady has led the state's anti-methamphetamine effort and pushed for programs to help autistic children.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she told the Las Vegas newspaper. "I don't know why he's divorcing me. All I'm trying to do is keep it together." She also complained: "He won't talk to me. I can't get ahold of him."

It has long been known that Gibbons and his wife have had problems in their marriage, and that has led to some awkward moments.

The governor and the first lady avoided each other at a ball held at the state Republican convention last month, arriving and leaving separately. During a gubernatorial news conference at the mansion in March, Gibbons' wife walked through the room silently, unacknowledged by the governor. Gibbons responded with a denial when a reporter asked if he had a girlfriend.

At the GOP convention, an irate Gibbons told reporters it was "a great disservice to our family" to see accounts of his marital problems in the newspapers. The couple have a college-age son, and the governor also has two grown children from a previous marriage.

Gibbons, a former airline and military combat pilot, was a state lawmaker and then served five terms in Congress before getting elected governor in 2006. While Gibbons was in Congress, his wife didn't join him in Washington, and continued to live in Reno.