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Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., speaks during a news conference at the Old Mormon Fort in this January 2001 file photo. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

Sunday, September 08, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Reid firmly rooted in Mormon faith

No other Latter-day Saint has served in higher role in Congress than Nevada Democrat

WASHINGTON -- When the transmission went out in his car, the young law student was ready to quit school and go back home to Nevada.

After all, he had a wife and two babies to support, and expenses in Washington, D.C., were eating him alive.

In desperation, he went to see the dean of George Washington University Law School to see if financial help might be available.

That's when he found out what President Truman meant when he said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."

Almost 40 years later, the dean's ice cold response is embedded in his memory.

"Why don't you just drop out of school?" the dean asked.

But Harry Reid did not drop out of school.

As it turned out, he had one more option: his Mormon church.

The church paid for his transmission. Reid graduated, went on to become a millionaire lawyer and eventually, the majority whip of the United States Senate.

"I'm sorry to admit now I would have quit," Reid said. "I think I was looking for a way out."

Without the church, he said, "I don't think I would have made it out of law school or been able to do as well with my family."

It is widely known that Reid, 62, is the first Nevadan to ever ascend to a position in congressional leadership.

What is not so well known is that no other member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has ever served in a higher leadership role in Congress.

Reid was not born into a Mormon family and did not join the church until he was a student at Utah State University in Logan. After a rough and tumble upbringing in the mining town of Searchlight, Reid became an amateur boxer and has acknowledged getting "called out" from bars in his youth.

"I am, by nature, somebody that ... I was raised where you settled your differences physically, and I still have a little of that in me and I'm fighting that all the time. I don't want to be mean to people," he said.

"I think the church had a tremendous influence on my family's life and my life, and I hope it's been for the better."

Reid did not become familiar with the Mormon Church until he began attending high school in Henderson, 45 miles from Searchlight.

"I never went to church, ever -- not once in a while or occasionally -- but never," Reid said. "There was no church in Searchlight. There was no place to go to church. So I had no experience with religion at all."

As a new kid in Henderson, Reid wore clothes his mother bought out of a Sears & Roebuck catalog. "I'm sure I was, as I look back, kind of a hick," he said.

In spite of Reid's awkward appearance, a couple of Mormon classmates at Basic High School befriended him and helped him meet other people.

Then Reid took a course offered by the Mormon Church on Mormon history taught by a bishop named Marlan Walker. "He was mesmerizing. For the first time in my life, I heard the message of Jesus Christ," Reid wrote in "Why I Believe," a book written by prominent Mormons.

But Reid did not join the church until he was at Utah State.

After his sophomore year in college, he eloped with his wife, Landra, because her Jewish parents did not want her to marry someone outside the faith. They were married by Walker, who performed the ceremony for free in a Mormon chapel. By the time he graduated from college, Reid and his wife had been baptized as Latter-day Saints.

As a Democrat, Reid is unusual among Mormon politicians. For example, there are five Latter-day Saints in the Senate. All are Republicans except Reid.

The first time Reid's son Leif attended a Latter-day Saint church in Washington, D.C., a member asked him to attend a Young Republicans rally.

When Leif declined, and explained he was a Democrat, the church member replied, "I didn't know a Mormon could be a Democrat."

Despite the perception that Mormons are inextricably linked to the GOP, the senator said he believes voter registration between Democrats and Republicans in the church is fairly even.

Reid also insists it is easier for a Democrat to be a good Latter-day Saint than it is for a Republican to be a good Latter-day Saint.

"One of the reasons I feel so strongly about the philosophy of the Democratic Party is that we're concerned about people who have little," Reid said. "Look at the programs we've pushed: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Republicans opposed those, every one of them. ... I don't see how a person who cares about their fellow man could oppose these programs."

Another Latter-day Saint, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, disagrees.

"Let's put it this way. I think that's pure bunk," Hatch said.

Without Republicans to control federal spending by Democrats, Hatch said, the country would be far worse off economically.

"Look how they're spending now and how it's just like a bunch of drunken sailors around here," Hatch said. "All I can say is true religion means living within your means. True religion means doing what is in the best interest of the country as a whole. True religion, it seems to me, is being honest about what has to be done around here."

As a Mormon politician, Reid said the only criticism he has received has come from church members. Reid has never had any problems with the church leadership in Salt Lake City. Instead, the complaints have come primarily from Mormons in Reid's base of Southern Nevada.

Reid recalled an ugly incident during his last campaign in 1998 when he won re-election by 428 votes over Republican John Ensign, who in 2000 was elected to the Senate.

One of Reid's sons, whom the senator declined to name, attended a Halloween party at a Mormon church in Las Vegas. The event, called "Trunk or Treat," allows children to pick up candy from car trunks in the church parking lot. In one of the car trunks was a picture of Reid, with the devil.

"We have many very conservative people in the church, and I'm not a very conservative person in a lot of things," Reid said.

"Some people have difficulty separating their politics from their religion," he said. "And even though that group ... is a small group, they still have aggravated me over the years. ... They're pretty non-Christian, in my opinion."

Reid stirred his own controversy recently when he suggested two Nevada Republican state candidates who are Mormons may have defaced their own campaign signs. The signs for state Senate candidate Tom Christensen and Assembly candidate Garn Mabey were defaced with stickers that read "Mormon bigots."

"My guess is as good as any, but maybe some of Christensen's people figure that's a way to engender sympathy and get the Mormons to turn out for him," Reid said.

Christensen, who lost in the primary election, said he was surprised when a reporter told him what Reid had said.

"I didn't hear him say those comments, and I want to be careful even now about what I say," Christensen said. "If he did make those statements, they are totally groundless and baseless."

William Stoddard, an attorney who served as a bishop in Reid's Mormon ward in Las Vegas during the 1980s, said the senator has been an outstanding member of the church.

As evidence, Stoddard points to Reid's five children, all of whom are active church members. But Stoddard acknowledged there are some members of the church in Las Vegas who strongly disagree with Reid's politics.

"Some of them are unbending. They can't conceive that he can be a good guy because he has a different point of view," Stoddard said. "I don't know what one does about that."

In 1974, in what Reid has acknowledged was the nadir of his career, he lost his first race for the Senate by a scant 624 votes to former Republican Gov. Paul Laxalt.

Even though he was a Mormon like Reid, Ashley Hall, who would later serve as the city manager of Las Vegas, supported Laxalt.

"One of the best things that happened to Harry Reid was how he matured significantly between 1974 and when he was elected (to the House in 1982)," Hall said.

Hall said his relationship with Reid now is positive, although they still disagree frequently on politics.

"I have never had any qualms about his personal religious philosophy," Hall said of Reid. "I've never seen him out of character when it comes to religion. He is a true blue member of the church."

In Utah, church elders view Reid as a valuable asset.

Richard Davis, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, said church leaders in Salt Lake City were pleased last year when Reid became Senate majority whip.

"They don't want the Mormon Church to be regarded as a Republican church, and they have been sending quiet messages in recent years that it's OK to be a Democrat and a Mormon," said Davis, who also is Mormon. "That is the sort of thing where Harry Reid helps because he's devout."

But Reid appears to draw a line between his religious work and his job in the Senate.

Lamar Sleight, director of the Mormon office of international and government affairs in Washington, D.C., for the past 10 years, said the church has never asked Reid for help on legislation pending in Congress.

"The church jealously guards its political neutrality," Sleight said. "Occasionally, we'll get a call from Capitol Hill relative to a moral issue. They might ask us for our position and we'll put out a statement. But we don't go formally to (lawmakers)."

At the same time, the church knows Reid is in a position to help if needed, Stoddard said.

"For example, it would not surprise me that if there were problems in some country abroad where full-time (Mormon) missionaries were not being treated properly that he might exert some influence," Stoddard said. "My sense is that something like that probably has happened."

Reid describes his Mormon faith as a great disciplinary tool. He said he has tithed 10 percent of his income to the church since becoming a member.

"I've always had a job in the church," Reid said.

He teaches Sunday school to a singles class at a Mormon church in Washington, D.C. Reid and another church member also visit four Latter-day Saint families each month to make sure their needs are met.

"Harry Reid is a good example of how to use religion in politics because he doesn't use it in an overt way," said Davis, the BYU political science professor. "I wouldn't be surprised if he loses the Mormon vote."