In a normal year, Gov. Jim Gibbons would have time to spend the final week of 2009 plotting out his re-election run, looking to boost his dismal approval numbers and dealing with a gigantic budget deficit.

Gibbons will instead be in a Reno courtroom for a divorce trial opposite first lady Dawn Gibbons _ the woman he evicted from the governor's mansion.

The trial will have no shortage of sizzle as it divides the spoils of a failed 23-year marriage and resurrects some of the scandals that have hounded Gibbons, including his alleged affairs with a Playboy model and a doctor's wife.

Some political observers say the proceedings will only cause more damage to a re-election bid that already is being condemned by some as a lost cause.

"This is not the publicity anybody wants," said Eric Herzik, political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "Nobody looks good coming out of a bitter, public divorce."

Even in Nevada, where divorce is etched in the state's history, "he's going to be hurt by it," said Fred Lokken, another political scientist at Truckee Meadows Community College.

The public trial, set to begin Monday and run through New Year's Eve day, is expected to be featured on the television show, "Inside Edition." If the first-term Republican governor is worried about the publicity, he's not showing it.

"I hope to have something to celebrate other than just the end of the year," Gibbons told reporters last week when asked of his New Year's plans.

In court documents, Gibbons' lawyers charged that part of the first lady's goal was to "so publicly degrade her husband" that he would be rejected by voters. "She knows that if she can drag this case (and her headlines) into the next election cycle she will more greatly damage his career," they wrote.

Dawn Gibbons' lawyers countered that her husband used her "youthful years, skills and charisma" to foster his political ambitions and win the governorship, then subjected her to humiliation, financial insecurity and emotional distress.

A recent poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal said Gibbons' approval rating rose to 19 percent in December, up from 14 percent in October and lowly single-digits last summer.

With the Nevada primary set for June 8, Lokken said Gibbons "doesn't have a long time to recover" from any political wounds inflicted in what has been a contentious and very public divorce.

Robert Olmer, Gibbons' campaign adviser, disagreed.

"I'm really not concerned because this has been going on for literally well over a year and I think the public is pretty much over this," Olmer said.