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Reid calls it quits

On Friday, Harry Reid showed he can still surprise the political world, with the announcement that he was ending his nearly 30-year Senate career.

Although there was plenty of speculation Reid might not run again, especially after injuries he suffered in a bizarre New Year’s Day exercise accident at his Henderson home, Reid gave every indication he was running again.

Perhaps it was the downtime occasioned by his injuries — he was confined to his condo at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., for weeks in recovery, and had to do business exclusively by telephone — that led him to consider his future in a way that his schedule might not have allowed otherwise.

In an interview on KNPR-FM 88.9’s State of Nevada program, Reid allowed that the money needed to get him re-elected might be better spent on expensive races in states such as Maryland, Florida and Wisconsin. He predicted Democrats would regain their Senate majority in 2016.

But if they do, it will be with New York U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer at the helm, not Reid. Whatever Schumer’s strengths, he can’t boast of anything close to Reid’s resume. Reid convinced former Vermont U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords to abandon the Republican Party and caucus with Democrats in 2001, in the process wresting control of the upper house from Republicans. Reid helped do the same thing in 2009, convincing former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter to switch parties, giving then-majority Democrats a 60th vote they needed to overcome filibusters. And Reid took a bold and controversial step in 2013, treading on Senate tradition to change the rules on filibustering certain presidential nominees.

Reid certainly deserves his own chapter in any future history of the Senate. There will be the good — he helped Nevada in hundreds of ways, large and small, known and unknown. There will also be the bad: He was forced to adopt a policy banning members of his own family from lobbying his Senate office after the Los Angeles Times reported in 2003 that his official actions benefited special interests represented by family members. Undaunted, Reid continued to help his family: He called Henderson Mayor Andy Hafen in 2011 to help get his son, Josh Reid, a job as city attorney, and it was revealed in 2014 that he’d used campaign funds to buy jewelry gifts for donors made by his granddaughter.

The hatred for Reid is palpable and plentiful, even in areas of the state where it ought to be the opposite. (Reid, for example, has prevented changes to mining laws that could see big mining companies pay more. But rural Nevada, where mining is big business, has never voted for Reid.)

In part, that’s because as Democratic leader since 2005, Reid had to take on the mantle of the Democratic Party. Critics said he was no longer, as a long-ago campaign slogan said, “independent like Nevada.” That only intensified when Reid helped President Barack Obama pass the Affordable Care Act, legislation that would never have become law without him.

But at his heart, Reid hasn’t changed. He’s still the pragmatic, western Democrat from Searchlight, the man who came from nothing and never forgot it, whose disdain for people with inherited wealth (think Mitt Romney or the Koch Brothers) was frequently on display. Behind all his rhetoric, all the railing on the Senate floor and in interviews, lies an FDR Democrat, one who believes in the power of government to carry into effect the principles of the New Deal, and one who believes that revolution is still unfinished.

That — not his politics, his taciturn personality or his position in the Senate hierarchy — is the real reason he’s so hated by the right, nationally and locally. Because no matter what else, Harry Reid knows how to win. And over a career spanning decades, he did just that.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist who blogs at SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or SSebelius@reviewjournal.com.

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