Gibbons Sorry He Texted His Alleged Girlfriend on State Phone

Posted by Myrna the Minx on June 12, 2008 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Is it me, or does the RGJ’s headline make Jim Gibbons sound like a five year old who got some chair time for being naughty? I bet Anjeanette Damon is having a lot more fun these days.

“Gibbons sorry he texted on state phone”

Gov. Jim Gibbons said Wednesday that it was a mistake to use his state cell phone to exchange hundreds of text messages with a personal friend and denied they were “love notes.”

A day after public documents revealed Gibbons spent six weeks last year engaged in a daily text message conversation with his friend Kathy Karrasch, he said during a 10-minute news conference that he could no longer remember the details of their exchanges.

Gibbons said they generally talked about the day’s happenings in the early months of his administration, which Gibbons described as a “very stressful time for me.” He said he talked to her about his office, the personnel decisions he was making and his tax policy. The pair also talked about her dog, her kids and other life issues, he said.

While he said he typically exchanges text messages with “a lot of people,” he expressed regret for using his state-issued BlackBerry to communicate with Karrasch.

“It wasn’t something I should’ve done,” he said. “When I realized the state was getting charged for it, I immediately ceased and paid the bills.”

Gibbons also said he recently has stopped seeing Karrasch, with whom he’s been spotted at several Reno outings because of the public scrutiny his divorce has put on their relationship.

“I do not see her. I do not text,” Gibbons said when asked if he had “broken up” with Karrasch. “I think simply because of the stress and all of this. The media has put a tremendous burden on her.”

Asked why he goes out with women while his divorce is pending, Gibbons quickly became combative.

“I don’t know if anybody should tell you or me who your friends can and cannot be,” he said. “And this is a friendship of many, many years.”

Gibbons filed for divorce last month from first lady Dawn Gibbons, citing incompatibility. Since then, Dawn Gibbons has accused him in court documents of abandoning the marriage because of his “infatuation and involvement” with the unnamed wife of a Reno doctor.

This week, Gibbons and his wife appeared to have called a truce, announcing they would no longer speak to the media about divorce-related issues, while they quietly negotiated a settlement.

But on Tuesday, the Reno Gazette-Journal obtained Gibbons’ public cell phone records dating back to the beginning of his administration in January 2007. The records document more than 860 text messages exchanged between Gibbons and Karrasch during a six-week period in March and April 2007.

The text messages occurred throughout the day and night, on weekends and work days. On one Friday, for example, Gibbons exchanged 160 text messages with Karrasch starting at 8:30 a.m. and ending at

11:45 p.m. On another night, Gibbons exchanged 91 messages between midnight and 2 a.m. with her.

The records also revealed 42 phone calls between Gibbons and Karrasch, mostly on the weekends and evenings. The records include two lengthy phone calls during working hours.

Gibbons denied the heavy texting interfered with his government duties, saying text messages take him very little time to write.