TOP OF THE TICKET

WASHINGTON — The White House is making plans to roll out an immigration reform proposal next month, one that would make good on President Obama’s promise to Latino voters to tackle the thorny issue.

On tap, White House aide Cecilia Munoz told reporters last week, is a reform package that “controls immigration and makes it an orderly system” -- and would provide a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country.

With 6 million Americans out of work, many of them blue-collar employees who believe immigrants are pushing them out of their jobs, conservatives predicted tough political sledding for any such effort. “They will face a blood bath,” commentator Pat Buchanan said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

One Republican legislator in Texas has a unique spin on how to help immigrants, and even second- and third-generation Americans, assimilate. State Rep. Betty Brown said she thinks Americans of Chinese, Japanese and Korean descent should change their names to make it easier for poll workers to identify them.

According to the Houston Chronicle, the comment came late Tuesday as the House Elections Committee heard testimony from Ramey Ko, of the Organization of Chinese Americans, about voter identification legislation.

Ko told the committee that Asian Americans often have problems voting because they may have a legal transliterated name and a common English name used on driver’s licenses or school registrations.

Brown suggested Asian Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible. She said:

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese -- I understand it’s a rather difficult language -- do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here? . . . Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

No word on how Ko responded. Perhaps, like us, he was speechless.

But Texas Democratic Chairman Boyd Richie found plenty of words. He accused Republicans in the state of trying to suppress votes with a partisan identification bill and Brown of “adding insult to injury with her disrespectful comments.”

Brown spokesman Jordan Berry said she was not making a racially motivated comment but was trying to resolve an identification problem. He also said Democrats are trying to sensationalize her comments because polls show most Texans support requiring identification for voting.

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As if the guy isn’t busy enough

They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

But when you’re the governor of Nevada and you’re in the middle of a nasty divorce, um, maybe not.

Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons has had a rough few months.

Chrissy Mazzeo, a former cocktail waitress, announced she was suing Gibbons for allegedly assaulting her in a Las Vegas parking lot.

Then the state’s Senate Finance Committee heard testimony alleging that the governor was padding salaries for his staff while asking school teachers and state employees to tighten their belts and take a 6% pay cut to help close Nevada’s budget deficit.

Now, in court papers unsealed Wednesday, the governor’s wife, Dawn Gibbons, accuses him in their divorce case of having extramarital affairs with a former Playboy model and another woman to whom he sent more than 860 text messages on his state cellphone.

The governor, who reimbursed the state $130 for the texts, denied that they were “love notes.”

Meanwhile his soon-to-be-ex said that her husband’s explanation that he was consulting on matters related to state government “is false and is laughable.”

Gibbons, casting himself as a fiscal conservative who has managed to balance the budget without raising taxes, told a Reno radio station recently that he “absolutely” plans to seek a second term next year.

And Tuesday he issued a challenge to President Obama, who is to appear in Las Vegas in May for a political fundraiser. Noting the president’s recent remark that Wall Street executives who take government money should not expect to go to Las Vegas on junkets, Gibbons called for a meeting.

“I think a face-to-face meeting between the president, myself and Nevada business leaders would do a lot to help overcome the perception that President Obama finds visiting Las Vegas somehow offensive,” Gibbons said. “If President Obama can come to Las Vegas to ask for political campaign cash, he can certainly take some time to explore helping the people who live and work here. We are all Americans.”

No word yet from the White House.

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Neuman writes for The Times.

Read Top of The Ticket, The Times’ blog on national politics, at latimes.com/ticket.