Harry Reid, a longtime US senator from Nevada and former Democratic leader, dies at 82
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Loading... - Nicola Collins
- 29 Dec 2021
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"I am heartbroken to announce the passing of my husband, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He died peacefully this afternoon, surrounded by our family, following a courageous, four-year battle with pancreatic cancer," she said in a statement Tuesday.
Reid rose from humble beginnings in Searchlight, Nevada, to become the most powerful politician in Nevada history, capping off his political career as the Democratic leader in the Senate, including eight years in the majority.
President Joe Biden, who served with Reid in the Senate, called him one of "the all-time great Senate Majority Leaders in our history" in a statement Tuesday.
"He was my leader, my mentor, one of my dearest friends," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement Tuesday evening. "He's gone but he will walk by the sides of many of us in the Senate every single day."
Former President Barack Obama released a letter he had written to Reid before his death in lieu of a statement. "I wouldn't have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn't have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination," Obama wrote.
Reid underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2018 and said less than a year later that he was in remission. At the time, he told CNN's Dana Bash that he felt "very good" and that he was "doing fine." But Reid responded to his cancer diagnosis with his usual bluntness, telling The New York Times in 2019: "As soon as you discover you have something on your pancreas, you're dead."
From modest beginnings to the US Senate
The beginning of Reid's life didn't hint at his political future. Born in 1939 in a modest home with no running water, his mother once earned money by doing laundry for local brothels, he wrote in his memoir, "The Good Fight," while his father worked as a hard-rock miner. He attended high school in Henderson, Nevada, often hitchhiking the 45-mile route.
A boxer in his youth, Reid later attended Utah State University before moving to Washington, DC, and working his way through law school at George Washington University by working as an officer for the United States Capitol Police.
"I think I am the only former Capitol policeman here that is a senator," Reid said in 2011. "I have such great respect for the work that they do."
After law school, Reid returned to Nevada and served as lieutenant governor from 1971 to 1975, the youngest person elected to that role in the state. After losing reelection, Reid served as chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission, a powerful position that oversees and regulates the state's casino industry. The job made Reid and his family a target of the mob: After he left that post, his wife found a bomb in the family's car, Reid wrote in his memoir.
Reid's political career grew with Nevada. When the state went from one congressional district to two after the 1980 census, Reid ran for a newly created congressional district around Las Vegas in 1982 and won the general election. He was reelected in 1984. He then successfully ran for Nevada's open Senate seat in 1986.
He rose through the leadership ranks there, serving as the chamber's Democratic whip from 1999 to 2005. From 2005 through his retirement in 2017, he served as his party's leader in the Senate, through Democrats' time in both the minority and the majority. Read More…
