A local political activist says he has filed an ethics complaint against Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid over Reid's acceptance of free seats at Las Vegas boxing matches.

Robert Rose, who has filed multiple ethics complaints against Nevada officials in the past, drafted a letter consisting mostly of quoted material from a Review-Journal article about the boxing controversy and asking that the Senate Select Commission on Ethics investigate.

"Because of the appearance of impropriety, I request that the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee immediately look into this matter," the letter states.

Reid has come under fire for attending fights as a non-paying guest of the Nevada Athletic Commission at a time when the commission was trying to sway his position on federal boxing regulation.

Reid has said that his actions were not improper, but that he will not accept free seats in the future.

Rose said he was filing the complaint because "it looks bad. He gets up and says he didn't do anything wrong, but now he says he's not going to do it anymore."

Rose said he wanted to send a message to Reid: "Why do you always have to play politics?" He said he sent Reid multiple faxed communications but received only form letters in response.

Rose said he was particularly upset with Reid about the immigration issue. He said immigration threatens to destroy American culture but Reid has taken an unacceptable position "because he wants the votes." Rose said he was a Democrat for 47 years but got fed up and became a Republican.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Reid broke no rules. "The Senate ethics rules explicitly permit any senator to attend this kind of event," he said.

The state Republican Party continued to criticize Reid on Thursday. "Harry Reid's latest ethical fumble adds to the examples of Harry Reid being against corruption before he was neck deep in it," Nevada GOP Chairman Paul Adams said in a prepared statement.

According to the Senate Ethics Manual, the ethics committee is obligated to investigate any suggestion of senatorial wrongdoing that appears to constitute a violation of the ethics rules. No formal complaint need be filed; investigations can stem from formal or informal complaints, including anonymous tips, as well as from information in the media or from the executive branch.

The committee's records, including complaints, are confidential. An ethics matter would become public only if it got to the point of hearings after being investigated and responded to by the accused.

Senators and their staffers cannot accept gifts valued at more than $49.99 each or more than $99.99 worth of gifts from any single source per year, according to the rules, but gifts from federal, state and local governments are an exception. As an example, the manual says senators may attend events at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., without being subject to gift rules.

The manual's section on gifts opens with a quote from former Sen. Paul Douglas: "When I once asked a policeman how some of his colleagues got started on the downward path, he replied, 'It generally began with a cigar.'"

Local ethics expert Craig Walton, the head of the Nevada Center for Public Ethics, said the point isn't whether Reid did or didn't run afoul of some fine print in a complicated rule -- indeed, it appears he didn't. The point, Walton said, is that officials should remember that they serve the public and decline to accept anything not offered to ordinary citizens.

"All of this haggling over definitions and dollar amounts could be avoided if they just didn't take anything," he said. "Just say no."

By that standard, Walton said, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., also shouldn't have attended boxing matches for free. Ensign didn't have a regulatory interest in boxing as Reid did; he had recused himself because his father is an executive at Mandalay Bay, which hosts fights.

"The whole commerce needs to stop," Walton said. "The fact that it is habitual and established and that everyone's doing it to some degree -- it's sickening, and I think the American people are getting sick of it."

Boxing officials have pointed out that, although Arizona Sen. John McCain attempted to pay for his ringside seat, the politicians actually sat with the athletic commissioners in an area not open to the public for any price. McCain's payment was donated to charity.

Another official who attended at the commission's invitation, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, tried to explain this distinction in his state-mandated financial disclosure form.

Along with custom-made cowboy boots and a Wal-Mart gift card, Huckabee listed his attendance at the December 2005 middleweight title fight between Jermaine Taylor and Bernard Hopkins. "These credentials have no face value and may not be purchased or sold," the gift disclosure states. "Thus, it is difficult to assign a value to this."

Huckabee and his wife also received free accommodations at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay valued at $755, the form states.