The Nevada gubernatorial race seemed to be a relatively low-key affair. Rep. Jim Gibbons (R), a popular long-time congressman, has led Senate Majority Leader Dina Titus (D) in most polls, and appeared on-track for a victory in a state that tends to like Republican governors.
Last week, however, we learned that a woman called 911 after Gibbons, after having quite a bit of alcohol, allegedly accosted a woman in a parking lot. Not enough to throw the campaign off track? How about the fact that Gibbons, running on an anti-illegal-immigration platform kept an undocumented housekeeper in his basement?
Congressman and gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibbons is facing more tough questions on a whole new issue. These questions revolve around an illegal immigrant whom Gibbons and his wife Dawn employed as their housekeeper and babysitter.
The woman, Patricia Pastor Sandoval, says she worked for the Gibbons’ for years and the family occasionally made her hide in the basement to keep her illegal status a secret.
It is illegal to knowingly employ an undocumented alien. It’s also illegal to employ such a person, pay them under the table, and then fail to pay employer taxes.
Sandoval says she worked for Jim Gibbons and his wife Dawn for several years, starting in 1987, and that the family has tried to cover it up. It’s a story pregnant with political implications.
That seems fair to say. Sandoval apparently wasn’t going to say anything, but was apparently irked by some of Gibbons’ heated rhetoric about “getting tough” on illegal immigration.
Now she’s telling her story. And quite a story it is.
In the beginning, she says no one asked about her legal status, but it became abundantly clear the Gibbons family knew she was not here legally since they often asked her to hide when certain people came to the house.
Sandoval said, “She told me somebody coming to the home, don’t answer the door, don’t say nothing because my husband is running. I think, at that time, for Assembly. One time she told me the newspaper or someone is coming, go downstairs and not come here until they left.”
The issue of Patty’s immigration status came to public attention once before, in 1995, when Pastor Sandoval wrote to the Gibbons family to request verification of her previous employment, which ended in 1993.
Dawn Gibbons told a newspaper she considered this an extortion attempt, so she filed a police complaint. Mrs. Gibbons told a reporter, quote, “She (Pastor Sandoval) said she wanted me to sign a letter saying she worked for me. I told her I can’t lie.”
Dawn Gibbons insisted Sandoval had never worked for the family. At the time, Sandoval was still undocumented and feared she would be deported. Eventually, Dawn Gibbons dropped her complaint.
Pastor Sandoval says she can prove she worked for the family. For one thing, she has photos with family members that span several years, some taken in the Gibbons home, some taken at special events like the baptism of Sandoval’s daughter, some taken at Sandoval’s home where Dawn Gibbons sometimes dropped off her son to be babysat.
Those House Republicans sure are a fascinating bunch, aren’t they?
Let’s see, given the details here, Gibbons is a lawbreaker (knowingly hired an undocumented immigrant), a hypocrite (campaigning against illegal immigration), and dishonest (his family denied having hired Sandoval). It’s an impressive trifecta.
Don’t worry, Jim, I’m sure being governor or Nevada is overrated anyway.