Gambling on Harry Reid

Have the Democrats hit the jackpot with the new minority leader from Nevada -- or crapped out?

By Michael Green

Nov. 17, 2004 | If you know Washington politics, you've heard of Harry Reid, elected Tuesday to replace the defeated Tom Daschle as Senate minority leader. If you don't know Washington politics, you are about to learn much more about him.

The Nevada Democrat won his fourth Senate term on Nov. 2 with more than 60 percent of the vote -- his largest margin in a statewide race in a 40-year political career. And after his party lost four Senate seats in the same race, he was well positioned to become the Senate's most powerful Democrat.

Reid entered the Senate in 1987 with South Dakota's Daschle. They were similar: moderates from conservative states, low-key, hardworking, partisan but able to work well on both sides of the aisle. As Daschle moved up, so did Reid. After winning a third term in 1998, Reid became Daschle's whip, or assistant leader, running floor operations.

But when Daschle became the first Senate party leader in more than 50 years to lose his reelection bid, Reid promptly spoke to his friend and soon-to-be ex-colleague, then began rounding up votes. The way was clear for Reid to become the leader of the Senate opposition to George W. Bush.

Predicting Reid's effectiveness, especially as compared with Daschle's, is somewhat difficult. Daschle managed to appear obstructionist enough to inspire Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to end a long-standing gentlemen's agreement among members of the congressional leadership not to campaign against each other. By contrast, Mitch McConnell, Reid's Republican counterpart as whip, whom no one has accused of hiding his partisanship, is one of those praising Reid, personally and professionally.

The Democratic caucus's loss of some of its more conservative members (Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana, Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina and Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia) will certainly shape the role Reid ends up playing. The 44 remaining Senate Democrats (plus independent Jim Jeffords) may seem like a slightly more liberal group, but they have certainly heard the discussion of the role that "moral values" played during the campaign. As a moderate -- and a more conservative one than Daschle -- in a rebuilding party, Reid might carry more weight with his colleagues than his predecessor did as a barometer on the issues. In particular, as a pro-life Mormon, he will provide a counterweight when Republicans beat the abortion drum. NARAL rates him as pro-life, having voted for choice only 29 percent of the time, compared with Daschle's 50 percent.

As for Bush's inevitable nominees to the Supreme Court, Reid is shrewd and partisan enough to know when to fight and when to go along. Despite his leanings on abortion, he was among the 48 Democrats who opposed the confirmation of Clarence Thomas -- nominated by a more moderate President Bush.

As Reid becomes a more familiar presence on television and in print, Americans, Democratic and Republican alike, will find out a lot more about him. And they're likely to be pleased. In the meantime, here's some of his history.

To know Harry Reid, you need to know Searchlight. Searchlight is a stop on the highway between Las Vegas and Laughlin. Its residents mostly live in trailers and congregate at a casino. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a successful mining camp and has occasionally revived.

Inez and Harry Reid lived in a shack in Searchlight and had four boys. The youngest, Harry, was born on Dec. 2, 1939. One of his lingering memories is of his mother picking tiny rocks out of his father's back after a long day in the mines. He often joined his father underground. "I never did any drilling, but I ran the hoist on a lot of occasions, and I did a lot of mucking," he later said.

His parents had it tough. His father committed suicide, a victim of ill health, alcohol and depression. His mother lost all of her teeth, Reid recently told a group dedicating the new dental school at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and one of his first acts when he had enough money from practicing law was to buy his mother a set of dentures.

To continue his education beyond junior high school, Reid had to leave Searchlight. "Even though I began to spend less and less time in my hometown, my thoughts often returned to the days of my youth. Most of all, I realized how much I loved the desert," he wrote in "Searchlight: The Camp That Didn't Fail," a scholarly history of the town he published with the University of Nevada Press.

Now he has returned. He built a home on a hill overlooking Searchlight. His political action committee is called the Searchlight Leadership Fund, and he keeps a Searchlight map in his Senate office.

Reid knows the importance of a balancing act. He was born in a "red" portion of the state, the old Nevada of miners and ranchers, but his votes come from the "blue" parts, the new Nevada in which gaming dominates. Reid tries to represent all of these interests, yet rarely receives much support outside Las Vegas and Reno. Still, their votes are enough to have elected him four times to the Senate.

In both gaming and mining, corporations and their workers want to be left alone, but the feelings of miners and ranchers in rural Nevada may be stronger: Some federal employees with the Bureau of Land Management have even claimed to fear for their lives. Rural Nevadans tend not to be culturally conservative so much as libertarian.

Reid gets fewer of their votes, but he knows them and their thinking, thanks to his many campaigns and his ties to Searchlight. One of his old teachers sees another effect of his beginnings on him: "I think, now, that it must have been the spirit of the mines in Searchlight, something raw and untamed and confident. He had no fear."

Next page: Reid's first major office was as student body president