Matt Ortega

The recently sworn-in Governor of Nevada Jim Gibbons may not actually be the governor. Wonkette explains:

Wonkette readers know all about Gibbons’s bizarre decision to take his oath of office in his living room on New Years Eve, which he justified with some “homeland security” baloney but which was really all about some sleazy machinations involving the state gambling board. But now it turns out that in jumping the gun, Gibbons might have invalidated his own gubernatorialness!

See, according to the Nevada Constitution, you can’t be the governor if you’re a federal office-holder — like, say, a Congressman. And according to the U.S. Constitution, Gibbons was a Congressman until January 3, after he took the oath, so it didn’t count. The Nevada Constitution also says that you’re not governor until you take oath. So presumably this means that Gibbons will almost certainly be arrested at any moment for impersonating a chief executive, and the Nevada governorship will devolve to the next person in the line of succession, who is presumably the head of one of the state’s major mob families.

This theory was first proposed by an anonymous commentor on the Las Vegas Gleaner blog, and taken up with glee by Reno and Its Discontents and Vote Gibbons Out. Presumably actual, non-blogger legal scholars will pick it up soon and Gibbons will be off to the hoosegow lickety-split.