Question of the Day - 23 February 2021

Following yesterday's mini-bio of Pat McCarran, for whom the Las Vegas international airport was named in 1968, here's a similar description of the life of Harry Reid, with whose name the Clark County Commissioners voted unanimously last week to replace McCarran's for the airport.

Harry Mason Reid was born in Searchlight, Nevada, a mining town 60 miles south of Las Vegas, in December 1939. His father was a hand-to-mouth hard-rock miner; his mother never made it past the eighth grade. He had three brothers; the family of six lived in a cabin with no indoor plumbing. He attended a two-room elementary school in Searchlight that had one teacher for all eight grades. In order to attend high school, a teenaged Harry had to travel to Henderson; he boarded with local families during the school week, then returned to Searchlight on weekends.

At Basic High School, Harry Reid's future was, basically, formed. He was elected student body president. His senior history teacher was Mike O'Callahan. And he met Landra Gould. Harry, a junior, and Landra, a sophomore, started dating. (They were married in 1959; in 1961, they had their first child and only girl, Lana. Harry and Landra also have four sons: Rory, Leif, Josh, and Key.)

Reid attended Southern Utah State College on a partial athletic scholarship (boxing), receiving his associate's degree in 1958. He earned his bachelor's degree, with majors in history and political science, from Utah State University in 1960. The Reids then moved to Washington, D.C., where Harry attended law school at George Washington University. To support himself and his family, he worked for the U.S. Capitol Police as a cop. Graduating in 1964, Harry and his family returned to Nevada, where he worked for a few years as a lawyer, including a stint as Henderson City Attorney. He parlayed that job into election to the Nevada State Assembly in 1968, at age 28, as a Democrat.

This was where Reid entered big-time politics and became a career politician. Naturally, he's had his fair share of power struggles, controversies, scandals, apologies, and triumphs.

Anyway, in 1970, his high school teacher Mike O'Callaghan ran for governor; 30-year-old Reid ran for lieutenant governor. They both won and Harry became the youngest lieutenant governor in Nevada history.

In 1974, he ran for Nevada's open U.S. Senate seat, losing by less than 600 votes to the Republican, former Nevada governor Paul Laxalt.

In 1977 Reid was appointed Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission, a post he held for five tumultuous years at a time when organized crime was being hounded out of Las Vegas for good. In the process, Reid went head to head with Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, whose temper tantrum at a Commission hearing where he lost his casino work card is legendary around here. Reportedly, Reid's life was threatened on several occasions; he's been quoted as saying, "They put bombs on my car, there were threatening phone calls at night, people tried to bribe me and went to jail."

In the early '80s, Reid returned to private practice for a few years, then won the first of two terms in the U. S. House of Representatives in 1982. He ran again for the Senate in 1986 and won, succeeding Laxalt. He was re-elected in 1992, then narrowly defeated his Republican opponent, John Ensign, in 1998. In 1999, Reid became Minority Whip. He was re-elected to his fourth Senate term in 2004 and was unanimously elected the Senate Minority Leader by Democrats. He became the Majority Leader in 2006 after the Democrats took control of Congress. He served in that position -- and like McCarran, was one of the most powerful politicians in the nation -- until the Democrats lost the control of the Senate in the 2015 election. At that point, he became minority leader of the Senate until his retirement in 2017; Reid didn't run that year, which ended his 30-year career in the Senate.

His political style was rather bland; he's soft-spoken, but fairly forceful, especially in later years when he held so much seniority and authority. His effectiveness was in his willingness to dive into the mundane details of getting things done, rather than any dynamic presence or charisma that he could claim. He had a reputation as a "relationship builder" -- meaning he was expert in backroom politics and quid pro quo.

His record on issues was as a moderate Democratic through the years. On national issues, he voted for both the Gulf War resolution in 1991 and the Iraq war resolution in 2002. He opposed the George W. Bush tax cuts, voted in favor of the ban on partial-birth abortions, did not approve of same-sex marriage, and was a strong supporter of the death penalty, including executing minors. He had a mixed record on gun control, voting against the ban on assault weapons, but in favor of the Brady Bill and background checks at gun shows. He tended to protect the mining industry from environmental regulation. Also like McCarran, he was always a strong advocate for Nevada. 

In a recent Las Vegas Sun editorial supporting the name change, the Sun noted that "Reid's commitment to diversity and social justice is reflected in the key role he played in such legislation as hate crimes protections, an updated Violence Against Women Act, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and the first federal statute barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. His close alliance with former President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden yielded the passage of the Affordable Care Act."

As for black marks on his record, again just like McCarran, he had some trouble with accusations of patronage. In 2003, an article in the Los Angeles Times reported that a bill introduced by Reid, the Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002, would provide "a cavalcade of benefits to real-estate developers, corporations, and local institutions that were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees to his sons' and son-in-law's firms." (At the time, one Nevada law firm employed all four of Reid's sons.) Reid later banned family members from lobbying anyone in his office.

Reid had to apologize in January 2010 for "racially tinged" comments he made a few years earlier when Barack Obama was running for president. He was also touched by the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal; he reportedly received money from Abramoff’s office, which he refused to return. And he took some heat for his vocal dislike of Republican super-donors the Koch brothers, whom he called "about as un-American as anyone that I can imagine" on dozens of occasions.