Well, they did it! The Clark County Democratic Party managed to pull off a convention do-over with a bare minimum of trouble. It just goes to show how well things work at the county party when the state party is running the show.

That’s not an overstatement: We were greeted on our way in by state party official Rebecca Lambe, who said she was “just volunteering.” Ditto for state party Deputy Executive Director Kirsten Searer, who gave us a tour of the well-run and peaceful voting areas. One of Searer’s deputies was also on hand.

Imagine the scene: Delegates with credentials already mailed to them. A “problem solving area” where disputes over credentials could be settled. (It was there that we spotted the current chairman of the Clark County party, surrounded by a phalanx of what we assumed to be “volunteers” who no doubt had instructions to keep him from trying to do anything.)

Upstairs at the Thomas & Mack, there were about 30 tables — divided by last name — where voters would go to get their election-machine card. The tables were manned by one volunteer from U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign, and one from U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s. Voters would then walk to a bank of election machines, overseen personally by Clark County elections chief H. Larry Lomax.

No arguments, no yelling, no problems. One voter was overheard to say “that was painless.” State Sen. Terry Care, tapped to rule on any problems that came up, had nothing to do but read his book.

It was an idyllic scene, completely opposite of what we saw on Feb. 23, when the county party royally screwed the pooch in its initial attempt to stage a convention.

At day’s end, more than 6,300 voters had peacefully voted, and Clinton came out ahead with 3,442 votes (54 percent) to Obama’s 2,900 votes (46 percent). The county will send 1,330 delegates to the state convention in Reno for Clinton, and 1,133 for Obama.

The state party even let the current Democratic Party chairman do interviews, and get a quote in the wrapup news release: “Democrats who support both of our presidential candidates united to plan this event because we all agree we need to put a Democratic in the White House this year,” the chairman was quoted as saying. (We’d tell you his name, but we’ve been told he’s a publicity junkie and we’re not enablers.)

The truth is, national Democrats demanded competence, which means the state party had to assert itself more strongly than it did before the February convention. And, when the state party ran things, they worked. So, thanks, state party.

You know, it seems to us that we read somewhere recently that Gov. Jim Gibbons tells lies. Where was that? We read so much stuff on a weekly basis, some of it not even celebrity gossip. Oh, that’s right. It was right there in CityLife.

Turns out that Gibbons actually did lie to Las Vegas Sun reporter Cy Ryan about whether he’d had trouble with his concealed weapons permit, the latest in the governor’s self-inflicted wounds. (Only this time — shocker! — the governor actually apologized.)

As our colleague Anjeanette Damon reports on her blog, stories have been circulating for awhile that Gibbons had some trouble with his permit, in that an instructor certified that Gibbons had qualified with at least two guns, when he had not. He fixed the problem later, but not before lying to reporters about it. Or was it a lie? According to Damon, Gibbons might have been trying to be clever.

You know, the worst thing here isn’t that the governor has a promiscuous relationship with the truth. (No, we mean the concept, not a lady named Truth.) The real problem is he’s armed. And if his aim is anything like his political track record, if he ever actually had to draw and fire his weapon, he’d probably kill two nuns and a puppy before he hit a bad guy.

But at least he’d say “sorry.”