Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was the longest-serving senator in Nevada's history, has died after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 82.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stands on the steps on Capitol Hill on Oct. 9, 2013, during a news conference amid a government shutdown crisis. | Evan Vucci/AP PhotoFormer Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a direct and dogged figure who converted the lessons of a hardscrabble childhood into a leadership role in national Democratic politics, died Tuesday. He was 82.
Harry Mason Reid was born in a town he would characterize in his autobiography as “a flyspeck on the map” and “a boomtown gone bust.” when selected to the Nevada Boxing Hall of Fame in 2018, adding: “It’s you and that guy across the ring.“ After his four-year term expired, he took another shot at D.C. and this time he won, capturing a House seat in 1982. At the end of his second House term, when Laxalt retired, Reid captured the Senate seat he had sought 12 years before.
Reid also rapidly developed a reputation for direct insults, as when he challenged Ross Perot in a 1993 Senate hearing, not long after Perot had drawn almost 20 percent of the vote in the presidential election. “I think you should start checking your facts a little more, and stop listening to the applause so much,“ Reid told him.
Democrats gained control of the Senate in 2006, propelling Reid to the position of majority leader. After the election, Reid became a more vocal critic of the Iraq War. Never a fan of Bush, he told the president, “Mr. President, this war cannot be won militarily. It is wrong to continue to send soldiers into a war that cannot be won militarily.”
For his part, Obama praised Reid’s leadership in the Senate. “Harry has the toughest job in Washington,” Obama told the New York Times in 2010. “He’s done as good a job as anybody could have done. He just grinds it out.”
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