Harry Reid

Harry Reid (born December 2, 1939, Searchlight, Nevada, U.S.—died December 28, 2021, Henderson, Nevada) was an American politician who represented Nevada in the U.S. Senate (1987–2017). He served as Democratic party whip (1999–2005), minority leader (2005–07; 2015–17), and majority leader (2007–15). He previously was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1983–87).

Reid was raised in a small mining town outside Las Vegas. To attend high school, he hitchhiked to nearby Henderson, Nevada, every Monday and lived with relatives during the week before returning home for the weekends. During that time he met his future wife, Landra Gould. They married in 1959 while attending the College of Southern Utah (later Southern Utah University), where Reid had received an athletic scholarship. They converted to Mormonism and later had five children.

Reid eventually earned degrees from Utah State University (1961) and George Washington School of Law (1964). He served as city attorney for Henderson (1964–66), as Nevada’s lieutenant governor (1970–74), and as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission (1977–81). In the latter role he found himself the target of attempted violence by organized crime after he instituted measures to reduce mob influence in the state’s casinos.

In 1982 Reid was elected to the first of two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served as one of only two representatives from Nevada. Because he could not join a Democratic congressional delegation from his own state (he was the only Nevada Democrat in Congress), he joined the California Democratic Congressional Delegation instead, becoming its secretary-treasurer in 1985. He won election to the Senate a year later.

Reid gained a reputation for being more conservative than many of his Democratic colleagues. He supported a Republican-sponsored constitutional amendment to ban the burning of the American flag and a bill to prohibit an abortion technique known as intact dilation and evacuation (“partial-birth” abortion). He also sided with the mining industry against environmentalists by opposing environmental legislation that would have imposed restrictions on mining in Nevada.

Despite his election as Senate minority leader in November 2004, some of his colleagues questioned his devotion to the party and to traditional Democratic causes. As Pres. George W. Bush’s leadership of the Iraq War was increasingly questioned by members of both parties, Reid’s occasional support for Bush’s policies met with renewed criticism among Democrats. Nevertheless, Reid quickly proved his allegiance to the Democrats in January 2005, when he demanded that Bush address concerns about the Iraq War in his State of the Union address, and again in September of that year, when he opposed Republican efforts to limit federal aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina. After the Democrats swept the midterm elections in 2006, Reid became Senate majority leader. In that position he challenged the president in 2007, after Bush announced plans to increase troop levels in Iraq. In 2009 Reid continued as majority leader during the new administration of Democratic Pres. Barack Obama.

A key supporter of Obama’s efforts to reform health care, Reid helped craft the Senate legislation—which extended health care to some 30 million previously uninsured Americans and prohibited insurers from denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions—and ultimately ensured its passage in December 2009 by negotiating provisions that won the backing of all the chamber’s 58 Democrats and its 2 independents to overcome Republican efforts to filibuster. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed by the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010, and signed into law by Obama two days later. Key to the House’s passage of the bill was Reid’s commitment on the eve of the House vote that the Senate would pass additional House legislation that would revise the bill.

As public dissatisfaction with Congress mounted during the early years of the Obama administration, Reid’s high-profile position made him the frequent target of criticism. Additionally, poor economic conditions in Nevada led many observers to predict that he would not be reelected to his Senate seat in 2010. However, the Republicans nominated Sharron Angle, a favourite of Tea Party supporters, over more-establishment Republicans, enabling Reid to narrowly prevail in the November midterm election in an expensive and bitterly contested campaign.

Reid continued as majority leader in the Senate, and in 2011 he was a central figure in the growing debate over the national debt ceiling, which had to be raised in order to prevent the government from defaulting on its public debt. After various attempts at a compromise proved unsuccessful, Reid helped draft a bipartisan agreement that raised the debt ceiling in stages while imposing various spending cuts. However, he failed to find Republican support for a number of subsequent initiatives, including increases to the minimum wage and gun-control measures. In the 2014 midterm elections, the Republicans regained control of the Senate, and Reid became minority leader. The following year he announced that he would not seek reelection in 2016. He left office in 2017.