In the wake of Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins’ decision to bow out of the race for governor, everybody seems to be singing from the same hymnal: Perkins could have won the primary, but would have had difficulty in the general, where he would likely have faced U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons. (And by “everybody,” we mean Perkins himself, along with R&R Partners chief Billy Vassiliadis, who repeated the mantra on Face to Face with Jon Ralston on Thursday.

Pardon us, but we disagree. In fact, there’s a very good chance Perkins could have come in dead last in a three-way Democratic primary with state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus and Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson.

First, polls — all polls, those conducted by newspapers, candidates and special interests — found Perkins’ name identification to be almost non-existent, especially in the rural parts of the state. For a man who’s been speaker (or co-speaker) for five years, it was a surprising showing.

Second, Titus (by virtue of her position leading Senate Democrats) had a higher profile than the speaker, and ran better against Gibbons in head-to-head matchups. Polls confirmed this.

Third, Perkins is simply not a passionate campaigner. Titus has a talent for firing up a crowd of Democratic activists and a way of instantly connecting with her audience that’s impressive. Perkins does not. (Case in point: When U.S. Sen. John Kerry came to the Thomas & Mack center last year during his presidential bid, Titus’ speech got one of the loudest ovations of the afternoon; Perkins, by contrast, read a tepid address that got a concomitantly tepid response.)

That’s not to say, of course, that Perkins doesn’t have passion. He does. Once you get to know him away from microphones, cameras and tape recorders, you’ll find he’s a man of principle who genuinely wants to do good things for Nevada. But voters, by and large, will never get to see him away from microphones, cameras and tape recorders, and thus they’d have no way of knowing that.

Titus, by contrast, connects with her audience almost immediately, a talent that’s sure to help her when she goes up against the more reserved Gibson in the primary.

Gibson, for his part, is smart and canny, his unfortunate decisions to represent Nevada Power (against a majority of Las Vegans, who voted to indicate the power company should be taken over by the water authority) and the Las Vegas Monorail notwithstanding. When a group of Henderson leaders showed up at the Review-Journal once to extol the virtues of the Henderson State College, Gibson was the only one who could answer questions with anything more than slogans.

The conventional wisdom was that Gibson and Perkins would have split the conservative Democrat vote and left Titus with party activists; that’s probably true. But Gibson would not have had to endure the negative publicity that came from allegations of double-dipping, a history of legislative special sessions (many of which were not Perkins’ fault) and the disaffection of organized labor that came out of the last session. While Perkins would have had the benefit of a campaign run by veteran Sean Sinclair, assisted by Vassiliadis and fellow R&R Partner Pete Ernaut, it would have been a struggle with Gibson for Second Place.

At least, that’s how we see it.

And speaking of conventional wisdom and post-Perkins analysis, what’s all this talk about “party leaders” supporting Gibson? Vassiliadis said so on Face to Face and political science professor Erik Herkiz of UNR said the same thing in the Las Vegas Sun.

Why would they not get behind Titus, who’s running stronger in the polls than Gibson and who definitely has the fire in the belly to win (not to mention getting the backing of EMILY’s List this week, too)?

Oh, that’s right. These are leaders of the Democratic Party in Nevada. For them, winning is a little like walking on the moon: They’ve seen it on TV, but it still seems like a strange and faraway concept that’s just too hard to figure out.

So the House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday that allows churches and faith-based providers in the federal Head Start program to hire only those people who subscribe to their religion.

Lay aside for a moment that we think no federal funds (or state or local funds, for that matter) should ever flow to a church — it’s inevitable that federal strings will corrupt otherwise worthy programs, and churches should rely exclusively on the voluntary donations of their parishioners for support. It also comes awfully close to the line of government-established religious programs, which is barred by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

What the House did was explicitly condone religion-based discrimination in employment paid for by taxpayers. “Congress should not be in the business of supporting state-sponsored discrimination,” said U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, the Florida Democrat.

Republicans will argue that Catholic churches shouldn’t be forced to hire non-Catholics, and that’s absolutely true. But its the Republicans that have created the problem in the first place, by allowing Catholic churches to receive federal funds. Once they do that, the nonsectarian umbrella of government covers the use of those funds, and non-discrimination laws ought to apply.

See? Told you there was good reason to keep churches from taking government money.

If religious groups aren’t smart enough to see that taking federal money is a bad idea, they should be forced to live with the consequences of that decision, which is to be forced to throw their hiring open to everyone, and comply with federal rules as to how the money is spent. That’s how it works in a country with an explicitly non-sectarian government.

By the way, Republican U.S. Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter voted to allow groups to take the money but still discriminate in hiring, while Democrat U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley voted against the idea.

U.S. Sen. John Ensign says he’d prefer the federal government made an across-the-board 5 percent cut in spending (except for defense and homeland security, of course) to help in Hurricane Katrina relief. But if that’s not enough, he says abandoning tax cuts should still be an option.

And if Ensign says he’s in favor of spiking tax cuts, you know things have got to be bad. (He made his remarks at a news conference in which U.S. Sen. John McCain predicted relief efforts could push the budget deficit to $500 billion.

Maybe somebody ought to tell President Bush?