If politics were a boxing ring, Harry Reid would be Rocky Balboa.

Fighting against the odds, Reid’s story is an ode to the underdog. The Mormon convert had no toilet seat in his childhood home of Searchlight, Nev. – now he holds the most powerful seat in the Senate: minority leader.

His “rags to riches” story is one of the most compelling in Washington.

“If I can make it in America, anyone can make it in America,” Reid said.

The taciturn but tenacious politician once dreamed of being a boxer. However, when his athleticism proved futile, the Nevada native did not give up. His small-town trait of hard work led him all the way to Washington, D.C.

Now the lawmaker packs more punch with the power to stymie the Republican agenda through filibusters, a technique Reid said he enjoys. Reid holds the record for the longest filibuster as a freshman in Congress – more than eight hours.

“The most frequently asked question I get after is, ‘How did you keep from going to the bathroom?’” Reid joked. “I tell them I prepared.”

His real preparation for politics, however, comes from the small mining town he grew up in. It was in Searchlight, 45 miles southwest of the bright lights of Las Vegas, where Reid was born Dec. 2, 1939 in a tin-roofed shack and where he learned values like hard work and integrity.

The son of uneducated parents, Reid’s political position was not inherited and handed to him on a silver platter. His mother washed laundry for local brothels. His father, a miner, committed suicide when Reid was young.

Reid attended high school in Henderson, Nev. where he met Mike O’Callaghan, his history teacher who taught him how to box and arranged for local businessmen to raise money to send him to Utah State University.

After eloping with his high school sweetheart, Landra Gould, in 1959 and converting to Mormonism shortly after, Reid attended law school at George Washington University and supported his young family by working nights as a U.S. Capitol police officer.

More than 40 years later, as Senate Minority Leader, Reid still “polices” the Capitol as he once did. No other Mormon has served a higher political position.

“I never dreamed I would have had a leadership position in the senate,” Reid said.

Dominated by the Republican Party in all three branches of government, Democrats say they find hope in Reid.

“I am so proud that we now have a western democrat who is the leader in Washington,” said Congressman Jim Matheson D-Utah. “He’s tenacious. He’s the kind of guy we need leading our party. He represents the right issues, the right approach.”

Despite the praise, critics of Reid think otherwise. Reid is not only a minority in Congress, but also in his church – with many LDS members believing “Mormon Democrat” to be an oxymoron.

BYU Political Science department chair and professor Ray Christensen said Reid’s strongly partisan democratic views have been controversial in Nevada, a state becoming more Republican.

“He’s an honorable man but I disagree with some of his positions,” Christensen said.

As a young boy in Las Vegas, Christensen worked in Reid’s law office. He said he thinks Reid’s filibusters will weigh negatively against President Bush’s judicial nominees. Nevertheless, Christensen said Reid does a good job in “protecting Nevada’s interests.”

Reid’s passion for his desert home state is evident in his unrelenting fight against the proposed nuclear waste storage in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. But on other issues, such as gambling, Reid walks the fine line between allegiance to his state and allegiance to his religion.

In the 1970s, Reid served for five years as Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. Although the LDS faith speaks against gambling, Reid protects his state’s number one industry with fervor – and they protect him. Casinos funded $546,113 to his 2004 reelection campaign, his largest contributor after Nevada law firms.

“Gambling is a personal choice,” Reid said in an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune in 1998. “I do everything I can to protect Nevada’s No. 1 industry but I have no obligation to protect gaming in other places.”

Although religion plays a large part in Reid’s life, he thinks it shouldn’t in the political arena.

“Religion has become republican oriented and is no longer objective,” Reid said.

Reid said he “wished church members would listen” to the pre-election edict given in sacrament meetings that states the LDS church does not affiliate with any political party.

“I’m living proof that a Mormon can be a democrat,” Reid said.

This can work to the church’s advantage, said BYU Political Science Professor Quin Monson.

“The risk is high if the church is perceived as a one-party church,” Monson said. “Harry Reid is the poster child for the church. We can point to him when we say we don’t endorse a political party – see, we have a democrat.”



Copyright Brigham Young University 13 Apr 2005