Nevada’s Harry Reid, a lion of the U.S. Senate and a conservation champion, passes on

In 1974, Neva­da Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Har­ry Reid lost a close race for the Unit­ed States Sen­ate by less than sev­en hun­dred votes to Repub­li­can Paul Lax­alt, in what was one of the few big loss­es for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that year. Democ­rats would go on to lose the Sil­ver State’s oth­er Sen­ate seat just eight years lat­er, with long­time Sen­a­tor Howard Can­non los­ing to Las Vegas cloth­ier Chic Hecht.

(Hecht was arguably the least dis­tin­guished mem­ber of the Repub­li­cans’ Class of 1982. He spoke with a lisp and was famous for say­ing he would not let Neva­da become a “nuclear sup­pos­i­to­ry.” He did not win reelection.)

Lax­alt secured a sec­ond term in 1980, but as the Rea­gan years began to draw to a close, he opt­ed to retire rather than face the vot­ers again.

See­ing an open­ing, Reid (by then a con­gress­man) jumped in and ran for the seat he had nar­row­ly lost twelve years pri­or. I met him at a $1,000 a head fundrais­er at Averell and Pamela Harriman’s George­town man­sion. Wash­ing­ton Sen­ate can­di­date Brock Adams didn’t want me to cov­er his event. An amused Janet Howard, Mrs. Harriman’s top aide, sug­gest­ed I come to the Reid event to see how Democ­rats were evening the play­ing field in the 1986 bat­tle for Sen­ate control.

Har­ry Reid came from a hard­scrab­ble back­ground. His moth­er did wash­ing for local broth­els. His dad was a min­er who even­tu­al­ly took his own life. Both drank.

Harry’s first tick­et out was as a box­er. Yet, here he was, stand­ing between the Degas and the Renoir and talk­ing about work­ing Americans.

He brought it off, too, in a soft voice that con­veyed intensity.

Har­ry Reid would serve thir­ty years in the Sen­ate. His biggest achieve­ment for his state was arguably killing the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy’s plans to use Yuc­ca Moun­tain as a repos­i­to­ry for “spent” but high­ly radioac­tive fuel rods from the nation’s nuclear pow­er plants — which he did almost single-handedly.

He did so much more, serv­ing his last ten years as Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader while build­ing a for­mi­da­ble polit­i­cal machine at home in Nevada.

Reid was a work­horse, not a showhorse. He spurned the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. par­ty cir­cuit and left the talk­ing to Chuck Schumer, who would suc­ceed him as leader.

Behind the scenes, he worked hard.

Reid was the first col­league to sug­gest that rest­less fresh­man Illi­nois Sen­a­tor Barack Oba­ma run for pres­i­dent in 2008. Oba­ma was mem­o­rably sur­prised return­ing from a very brief meet­ing with the leader.

He was instru­men­tal in secur­ing pas­sage of Obama’s Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act, albeit with pri­vate irri­ta­tion that the new Pres­i­dent made too many con­ces­sions in futile bid for more Repub­li­can support.

He helped res­cue the Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act from the inep­ti­tude of Sen­ate Finance Com­mit­tee Chair­man Max Bau­cus, who had let Sen­ate Repub­li­cans play him.

Nobody played Har­ry Reid. Know­ing that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty would be threat­ened in the 2014 midterms (and sure enough, Repub­li­cans picked up enough seats to gain con­trol that year amid low turnout), Reid brought his cau­cus togeth­er and engi­neered a rules change to exempt Cab­i­net and judi­cial nom­i­nees from the col­lec­tion of block­ing tac­tics known as the filibuster.

Reid was an improb­a­ble greenie.

He held onto sup­port from min­ers in Elko, but blocked util­i­ties’ bid to build four coal-fired pow­er plants in moun­tains of east­ern Nevada.

With a keen appre­ci­a­tion for his state’s nat­ur­al beau­ty — Neva­da is much more than Las Vegas and desert — he insti­gat­ed the cre­ation of Great Basin Nation­al Park. He also act­ed to keep clear the waters of Lake Tahoe.

Con­serv­ing pub­lic lands was a pas­sion of Rei­d’s. When he was first elect­ed, Neva­da had 70,000 acres of pro­tect­ed wild­lands. The total is now more than four mil­lion, includ­ing the Red Rock Canyon Nat­ur­al Area just out­side Vegas.

In the pub­lic lands act that was his vale­dic­to­ry achieve­ment, Reid (and Sen­a­tor Mur­ray) found room for addi­tions to our Alpine Lakes Wilder­ness and Wild & Scenic Riv­er des­ig­na­tion for the Mid­dle Fork-Sno­qualmie River.

Reid became a friend and ally of Seat­tle busi­ness­man Tom Cam­pi­on in sav­ing the Arc­tic. An acci­dent with exer­cis­ing equip­ment left Reid most­ly blind in one eye, and he found him­self bat­tling can­cer not long after retir­ing from the Senate.

He stayed active behind the scenes, help­ing Democ­rats flip a Sen­ate seat and cap­ture the gov­er­nor­ship in 2018. Biden eked out a 20,000 vote win in 2020.

The Cam­pi­ons became such fans that they named their fam­i­ly dog “Har­ry Reid.” The real Har­ry was charmed.

Just before his pass­ing, Barack Oba­ma penned Reid a letter.

Its mes­sage: I would not have become Pres­i­dent with­out you.

An exag­ger­a­tion? I think not.