Former Senate majority leader and Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress, Harry Reid, died on Thursday at the age of 82, his wife Landra Reid announced.
“We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support from so many over these past few years. We are especially grateful for the doctors and nurses that cared for him. Please know that meant the world to him,” his wife said.
Born in Searchlight, an isolated mining town in the Battle Born State, in 1939, Reid went on to graduate from Southern Utah State College in 1959, and then Utah State University in 1961, before attending George Washington School of Law where he graduated in 1964.
Reid then joined the Capitol Police Force where he stayed from 1961 to 1964 before being admitted to the Nevada bar in 1963. He served as city attorney in Henderson from 1964 to 1966 and then on to become a member of the Nevada State assembly from 1969 to 1970.
In 1977 to 1981, he became chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission.
He then went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 1987. After this, he was elected to the United States Senate where he served from 1987 to 2017, including as majority leader from 2005 to 2015.
The combative Reid, once an amateur boxer, was widely acknowledged as one of the toughest dealmakers in Congress.
A moderate Democrat, Reid was a polarizing figure in the chamber. He went by the motto, “I would rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight,” much to the annoyance of his fellow lawmakers.
Reid played a huge role in passing the Affordable Care Act, advocating for land conservation, and reforming financial regulation after the Great Recession.
As majority leader, he also led the Senate in eliminating the 60-vote majority needed to vote on most presidential nominees.
In Nevada, Reid is best known for being a staunch opponent of a nuclear waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain.
However, Reid wasn’t without controversy, and famously called former president George W. Bush, a “liar” and a “loser,” although he later apologized. He also accused 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on the Senate floor of not paying his taxes.
He retired in 2016 after an accident left him blind in one eye.
Tributes poured in for Reid on Thursday after the news of his death, led by President Joe Biden, who called him a “great American.”
In a statement from The White House, Biden also praised Reid for being a “leader who believed the Federal bench should reflect the diversity of America.”
