The former Senate Majority Leader died Tuesday at the age of 74. He died at the age of 22.
There are more people capable of doing things than I am. I have the job. In December of 2016 before retiring from the Senate, he told POLITICO that he tried to do the best he could with the job.
A former boxer who served five terms in the U.S. Senate, the Nevada Democrat was an opposition figure pushing and prodding President George W. Bush and then as the Senate. TheAffordable Care Act became law under his watch.
"He's got that charm that is hard to replace," said Obama in March 2015.
The longest-serving senator in Nevada history died of cancer. Landra said her husband was a "deeply loyal friend" and a "dout family man". They were married for 62 years.
Schumer said that he had met one of the most amazing individuals he had ever met.
Schumer said that he was tough as nails, but caring and compassionate, and always went out of his way to help people who needed help. He was one of my dearest friends.
The Taxpayers' Bill of Rights was passed by the Senate. He said that he ran a tight ship as majority leader and that he appreciated the work of the Nevadans represented by him.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak said that he was a "giant". The Democratic governor said that there will never be another leader like the senator.
Sisolak said that he appreciated the fact that SenatorReid never forgot who he was or where he came from.
In his book, Harry Mason Reid described the town he was born in as a flyspeck on the map and a boomtown gone bust.
He wrote in "The Good Fight: Hard Lessons from Searchlight to Washington" that he came from a mining town. It was prostitution.
The miner and his mother were the parents of Reid. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one of the figures his parents revered. Their home was built from railroad slats and had no hot water or indoor plumbing. His father took his own life at age 58.
To attend high school, Harry had to travel 45 miles to Henderson, where he was elected student body president, and met Landra Gould, who would become his wife in 1959.
He would have a different outlook on life as a result of boxing. He told Kevin Iole that in a fight, there was no one to help him.
Since Nevada had no law school, he went to George Washington University. His first job was with the Capitol Police. He wrote in "The Good Fight" that he would go to law school full-time and work at the Capitol on the 3-to-11 shift. He said he felt invisible.
After graduating from law school, he was elected to the state Assembly at the age of 28. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 1974 but lost to Paul Laxalt.
In 1977 he was appointed to lead the Nevada Gaming Commission, a job that required him to give up all his naivete about the state's mob-ridden casinos. It was an intense, weird time when I sometimes felt like I was in a terrible funhouse. A bomb was attached to his wife's car.
He took another shot at D.C. and won a seat in the House. When Laxalt retired after two terms in the House, he gave up the Senate seat he had sought for 12 years.
He had a reputation for being very quiet. In 2008 he wrote, "I speak bluntly." Sometimes I can be careless. I believe in something and do it. I don't worry about it. This has not served me well, but it is not who I am.
Jon Ralston, a political journalist in Nevada, looked at the 1986 campaign and thought it had launched the career of a man he called a Machiavelli. He said that he was a thoroughly unprepossessing man and manifestly terrible candidate who nonetheless achieved unlikely campaign victories and went on to reach the pinnacle of congressional power.
In the Senate, he established himself as a tough battler on Nevada and Western land management issues, as well as a liberal with some conservative leanings. He was criticized for his love of the casino industry in Nevada.
When he challenged Ross Perot in a 1993 Senate hearing, he quickly developed a reputation for direct insults. He was told to stop listening to the applause and start checking his facts.
He became part of the Democratic leadership in 1995 as co-chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, then became the party's whip in 1999. In November 2004, when John Kerry and Tom Daschle were defeated in the presidential election, the shock of that event quickly followed that of gathering the support he needed to become his party's leader in Washington.
The organization was formidable by the turn of the millennium. He brought in talented Democratic operatives from around the country, as he grew more partisan, leaving behind any pretense that he was independent like Nevada.
The privatization of Social Security was one of the first big tests for the man. Social Security will not be hijacked by Wall Street. He told Tim Russert in 2004 that it wouldn't happen.
The Democrats gained control of the Senate in 2006 and gave up their majority leader to be replaced by him. After the election, he became more critical of the war. He told the president that the war could not be won with military means. It's wrong to send soldiers into a war that can't be won.
Bush would later say that the public declaration that the war was lost was one of the most irresponsible acts he had witnessed in his eight years in Washington. In October 2008, Bush and Reid were on the same side, though Bush was credited with helping to save the package that had been defeated in the House.
When one of the junior members of his caucus was elected to succeed Bush, he became one of the strongest advocates for Barack Obama. It was not always easy, as Obama kept a distance from Congress after he was elected.
Jonathan Alter wrote in "The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies" that "Obama spoke to Democratic senators he genuinely liked no more than two or three times a year."
Obama praised the leadership of the Senate. Obama told the New York Times that Harry has the toughest job in Washington. He has done a good job. He grinds it out.
The top Republican target in 2010 wasReid. In 1998 he faced a tough challenge from John Ensign and was able to retain his seat. When Sharron Angle won the GOP primary in 2010 she gave the Democrats a boost.
Chris LaCivita, political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he had never had the misfortune of working with such incompetence.
The election gave the House to the Republicans and left the Democrats with a diminished majority. Legislative victories are harder to come by. In order to acknowledge that reality, the Democrats changed the ground rules when it came to the use of filibusters, greatly limiting their use when it came to presidential appointments. The American people think the Senate is broken, and I think they are right. McConnell dubbed it a power grab, though he would use those rules once Trump was elected president.
The New York Times quoted him as saying that he had no choice because they couldn't get approved. Either Obama's presidency would be a joke or it would be a reality.
Democrats lost the majority in the Senate. The boxer had become a marathon runner and sustained an eye injury while exercising. He had an eye patch on the Hill because of the damage to his right eye.
He decided not to seek a sixth term in the Senate. There was a rumor that he did it because he was afraid of a tough battle. Reid is a lot of things: nasty with his enemies, a master of strange locutions, and Brusque with everyone. He wrote that he is not afraid.
The results of the Senate elections in Nevada in 2016 and 2018 showed that the influence of the man known as "The King" remained. They were seen as a tribute to the strength of the senator.
It is the only state in the nation where both women in the U.S. Senate and the majority of the state Legislature are women.
The critic of President Donald Trump was also a critic of the Congress. People think that Trump created the Republican Congress. Wrong. He said in 2017: "They created him, they created him."
