Poll shows Nevadans haven’t given up on Ensign yet

Nevada voters are more forgiving than South Carolina voters when it comes to GOP politicians admitting to boinking women other than their wives.

In South Carolina, a poll showed 46 percent polled want Gov. Mark Sanford to resign, while 39 percent want him to hang in there despite his fling with his Argentinean soul mate and his five-day disappearance, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll in late June.

In Nevada, 54 percent don't want U.S. Sen. John Ensign to resign because of his nine-month affair, 34 percent want him out of the Senate, and 12 percent are undecided, according to last week's Mason-Dixon poll for the Review-Journal.

Nevadans think less of Ensign, but they don't think his behavior and hypocrisy means he shouldn't hold office.

One major difference about the resignation scenario: If Sanford resigns, there's a capable lieutenant governor to fill out the rest of his term.

In Nevada, if Ensign resigned, Gov. Jim Gibbons would appoint a new senator to serve until the 2012 election, and one nightmarish fear is that he would appoint himself. That would leave the governorship to Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who is still under criminal indictment.

Outsiders looking in would see a senator who had a nine-month affair, which started in his own house during the 2007 Christmas holidays, a governor with a 14 percent approval rating serving as senator, and a lieutenant governor under indictment elevated to governor. That domino effect doesn't present a pretty image for Nevada.

Ensign was popular in Nevada in May, before he made a pre-emptive strike and announced his affair with Cindy Hampton, his wife's close friend and Ensign's campaign treasurer.

His favorables have plummeted from 53 percent in May, to 39 percent in June, to 31 percent in July. Much lower and he officially becomes dead meat, but this far out, he has time for a resurrection effort.

Ensign told the Las Vegas Sun a week ago that he's running for re-election in 2012. It seemed laughable, even unbelievable, when he said his supporters are telling him not to resign and he plans to run for a third term. (Our poll showed Nevadans are evenly split about him running for a third term.) He also said his supporters are telling him, "Keep your head up. This thing will pass." (He's deluding himself about that.)

The complaint filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government with the Federal Election Commission about Ensign's parents' $96,000 payment to the Hamptons will keep this story bubbling.

But Nevadans showed their values in this poll. Betraying the bonds of friendship and payments that look strongly like payoffs are viewed as serious, while out-of-wedlock boinking was "very serious" to less than one-out-of-three Nevadans.

When pollsters asked what bothered Nevadans the most about the Ensign story of betrayal and hypocrisy, the largest number, 60 percent, thought it was "very serious" that the affair was with his wife's best friend. In order of importance:

• 58 percent deemed it "very serious" because he had an affair when he belonged to a family-values group, the Promise Keepers.

• 50 percent said it was "very serious" he had an affair with the wife of the head of his Senate office.

• 49 percent said the $96,000 "gift" by Ensign's parents to the Hampton family was "very serious."

• 48 percent deemed it "very serious" that Ensign had an affair with an employee of his campaign staff.

• 47 percent said it was "very serious" that Ensign fired Cindy and Doug Hampton.

Brad Coker from Mason-Dixon Polling & Research said the difference between Sanford and Ensign is that Ensign didn't disappear and not tell anybody where he was.

Coker said polling in Louisiana shows that "getting caught with a hooker isn't as bad as having a mistress." U.S. Sen. David Vitter, another family-values Republican caught involved with a hooker in 2007, appears headed for re-election next year in Louisiana, another forgive-and-forget state.

What lingers like a malodorous cheese is the money, which appears more like hush money (or money for services rendered) than "gifts."

The money keeps the affair in the news, not the sex.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.