'The guy from Searchlight': Former Senate leader Harry Reid is dead at 82

Born into poverty in Searchlight, Nev., the onetime amateur boxer served in Congress for 34 years — first in the House and, later, for three decades in the Senate.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Former Senate leader Harry Reid of Nevada has died at age 82. He died this afternoon after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer, his wife of 62 years announced. The Nevada Democrat served as both majority and minority leader during President Obama's presidency. NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis has this remembrance.

SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Harry Reid was a lot of things, but he was most often proud of what he was not. His distaste for the Washington social scene was so well-known he often bragged about how often he turned down party invitations, as he did here in his Senate farewell address in 2016.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

HARRY REID: So during my 34 years in Congress, I have approximately 135 or -36 of these. I've attended one of them.

(LAUGHTER)

REID: For me, that was enough.

DAVIS: Reid's rise in politics was never attributed to his social skills. His lifelong habit of ending phone calls by simply hanging up when he was done with a conversation was the stuff (ph) of Washington legend. Here's then-Vice President Joe Biden speaking at a Reid tribute before he left the Senate.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Harry, I got to admit, years to come, every time I hear a dial tone, I'll think of Harry.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVIS: To understand how this soft-spoken, anti-social senator rose up the political ranks, it's necessary to understand where he came from. Reid was born in a wooden lean-to with no electricity or plumbing in the impoverished town of Searchlight, Nev., population 250. His father was a miner, and his mother earned money by doing laundry for the town's brothels.

REID: The big business, while I was growing up, was prostitution. All up in there (ph), there was one time as many as 13 houses of prostitution. That's what kept the town jumping.

DAVIS: That was Reid speaking to NPR from Searchlight in 2004, shortly after he was elected Democratic minority leader by his colleagues for the first time. Reid liked to say he made it out of that town because he was a fighter, literally. He was an amateur boxer in high school, and he brought that same pugilist attitude to politics, which he once described this way.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

REID: I'm - always would rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight.

DAVIS: And fight he did. Reid led Senate Democrats for more than a decade from 2005 until his 2016 retirement. It was an era defined by a rise in the polarization of the once-clubby atmosphere of the United States Senate. Reid's defining moment as leader came in 2013, when he made the controversial decision to blow up longstanding Senate filibuster rules to make it easier for President Obama to get most of his nominations through a gridlocked Senate. Reid defended the decision this way.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

REID: The rule change will make cloture for all nominations other than the Supreme Court a majority threshold vote, yes or no. The Senate is a living thing. And to survive, it must change as it has over the history of this great country.

DAVIS: Republicans opposed the move and warned there would be consequences. Here's then-Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MITCH MCCONNELL: Say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, you'll regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.

DAVIS: McConnell was right. After Republicans won control of the Senate in 2014, he cited the Reid precedent to push through a rules change to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017. It paved the way for Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to join the court and forever changed how the Senate approves a president's nominees. But Reid had no regrets. In a final editorial for the New York Times, Reid wrote, the rules change was the right thing to do. Plus, regret simply wasn't his style.

Susan Davis, NPR News, the Capitol. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.