Reid’s fight over
Dem Senate titan, 82, dies of cancer
Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of the most powerful figures in Washington during the Obama administration, died Tuesday after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 82 years old.
The Democrat, Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress, died “peacefully” surrounded by friends, said his wife, Landra Reid.
“Harry was a devout family man and deeply loyal friend,” she said in a statement. “We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support from so many over these past few years. We are especially grateful for the doctors and nurses that cared for him. Please know that meant the world to him.”
A onetime amateur boxer and product of the Las Vegas Democratic machine,
Reid (below) spent four years in the House of Representatives before he was elected to the Senate in 1986. He spent the next 30 years in the upper chamber of Congress, serving as majority leader from 2007 until 2015.
He built a reputation for a brusque and bruising political style while in office. Former President Barack Obama was among those that noted Reid’s tendency to abruptly end phone calls without saying so much as goodbye.
Reid was born in Searchlight, Nev., and raised in a small cabin without indoor plumbing. His alcoholic father killed himself at age 58, and Reid swam at a local brothel and hitchhiked to high school.
He married his wife in 1959 and put himself through George Washington University while working as a Capitol officer. He entered politics as a Nevada state lawmaker and eventually became the youngest lieutenant governor in state history, under Gov. Mike O’Callaghan. Reid will also be remembered for changing the Senate rules in 2013 to lower the threshold for confirming Obama’s judicial nominees from 60 votes to a simple majority. It didn’t take long for that maneuver to backfire on Democrats. Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2014 and GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expanded the use of the so-called “nuclear option” to get all three of Donald Trump’s nominees confirmed to the Supreme Court.
A year before forcing the rule change through the Senate, Reid falsely claimed on the chamber floor during the 2012 presidential campaign that GOP nominee Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes during the previous decade.
Reid never retracted the claim or apologized. When asked about the accusation in a 2015 CNN interview, Reid retorted: “Romney didn’t win, did he?”
The following year, Reid tripled down on his scurrilous claim in an interview with The Washington Post, calling it “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
Earlier this month, the Las Vegas airport was renamed Harry Reid International Airport.