CARSON CITY, Nev. AP— In a normal year, Gov. Jim Gibbons would have time to spend the final week of 2009 plotting out his re-election run, looking to boost his dismal approval numbers and dealing with a gigantic budget deficit.

Gibbons will instead be in a Reno courtroom for a divorce trial opposite first lady Dawn Gibbons — the woman he evicted from the governor’s mansion.

The trial will have no shortage of sizzle as it divides the spoils of a failed 23-year marriage and resurrects some of the scandals that have hounded Gibbons, including his alleged affairs with a Playboy model [Leslie Durant] and a doctor’s wife [Kathy Karrasch] .

The public trial, set to begin Monday and run through New Year’s Eve day, is expected to be featured on the television show, “Inside Edition.” If the first-term Republican governor is worried about the publicity, he’s not showing it.

“I hope to have something to celebrate other than just the end of the year,” Gibbons told reporters last week when asked of his New Year’s plans.

In court documents, Gibbons’ lawyers charged that part of the first lady’s goal was to “so publicly degrade her husband” that he would be rejected by voters. “She knows that if she can drag this case (and her headlines) into the next election cycle she will more greatly damage his career,” they wrote.

from www.latimes.com – Nevada voters had a fair amount of warning signs that Gov. Jim Gibbons’ tenure might be a little, um, rocky.

Say, when a cocktail waitress [Chrissy Mazzeo] accused him of trying to sexually assault her in a parking garage. Or when the FBI opened an investigation into whether he accepted gifts from a government contractor. (No charges were filed in either case.)

In fact, Gibbons’ Wikipedia entry lists more “criticism and controversy” than “gubernatorial initiatives.” Right now, polling shows former federal Judge Brian Sandoval trouncing Gibbons in the 2010 Republican primary.

You can’t entirely fault the Nevada electorate, however. It seems Gibbons’ wife, Dawn, also overlooked some potential flaws in her future spouse, who filed for divorce in 2008.

In a sympathetic profile in this month’s Reno magazine, Nevada’s first lady revisits the beginnings of the star-crossed romance:

But after a year-and-a-half, she broke off the relationship because she felt unappreciated. She says the final straw was when he gave her a birthday card that read, “You’re so lucky because you have me.”

She started dating someone else.

“But Jim confided in my mom and said I broke his heart,” she says.

“She started telling him where I was going with this new boyfriend, and he started showing up everywhere we were. …

“I thought he must really love me because he’s not going away,” she remembers.

Dawn has accused Jim of having extramarital relationships with at least three women [two of them married], and one who posed for Playboy in 1989. Though Dawn lives in an apartment on the governor’s mansion grounds, she said Jim threw a party for one woman at the mansion and had dinner with another outside.

She told reporter Siobhan McAndrew “there hasn’t been a good day” for her as Nevada’s first lady.

With Gibbons’ favorable rating dipping as low as 10%, it appears voters are having similar regrets.

from www.celebgalz.com -April 6, 2009 saw court papers unsealed that showed allegations made by both Jim Gibbons and Dawn Gibbons.

Dawn Gibbons named two women she suspected of having affairs with her estranged husband. Kathy Karrasch and Leslie Durant, of Reno, Nevada, were alleged former girlfriends of Jim Gibbons.

Kathy Karrasch is the estranged wife of a doctor in Reno, Nevada. In 2007, Jim Gibbons used a state cell phone to send messages to Karrasch. Gibbons apologized and reimbursed the state $130 for the cost of his text messages to Karrasch. Gibbons allegedly texted several hundred messages to Karrasch.

Dawn Gibbons accused Jim Gibbons of having had an affair with Leslie Durant. Durant is the former wife of the ex Mayor of Reno, Pete Sferrazza. Leslie Durant was once a Playboy model.

Jim Gibbons married Dawn Gibbons in 1986. The Gibbons were married for about 22 years. Jim Gibbons filed for divorce in 2008. Jim Gibbons cited “incompatibility”. The Gibbons have 3 grown children; Chris Gibbons, Jennifer Gibbons and Jimmy Gibbons. The Gibbons’ grand children are Grant, Brooke and Riley.

Old post on May 29, 2008:

Dawn Gibbons, 54, claimed that her soon to be ex-husband, Jim Gibbons, 63, the Governor of Nevada, has a girlfriend. Based on that claim, she is asking the judge to make her divorce case go public.

Dawn Gibbons alleged that Jim Gibbons had a girlfriend who was married to a doctor in Reno, Nevada. Jim Gibbons has denied her claims. Jim Gibbons said that the cause for divorce was incompatibility. Dawn and Jim Gibbons were married for the past 22 years.

Chrissy Mazzeo had claimed that Jim Gibbons groped her in 2007. Jim Gibbons was cleared by the police in Oct 2007.

Jim Gibbons and his holiday cruise mates in 2005.