Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, left, and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean speak at a veterans forum Tuesday at American Legion Post 8 in Las Vegas. Dean said Monday's report about Reid's attendance at boxing matches was "nonsense." Photos by K.M. Cannon. Nevada Sen. Harry Reid on Tuesday denied that he improperly accepted a free seat at a boxing match between Bernard Hopkins and Oscar de la Hoya in September 2004 at the MGM Grand. Reid can be seen in the crowd behind the right elbow of Hopkins. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who paid for his seat, can be seen past the shoulder of Hopkins.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday his free attendance at boxing matches was necessary for him to understand boxing regulations and represent Nevada's interests.

Reid, D-Nev., was responding to accusations that, in sitting ringside for free at several Las Vegas fights from 2003 to 2005, he improperly took gifts from an agency he was involved in regulating at the time, the Nevada Athletic Commission, which oversees boxing in the state.

"I represent the state of Nevada," Reid said, answering news media questions at a veterans event in Las Vegas. "The Nevada Athletic Commission is part of the state of Nevada. It seems to me only logical that anything good for the state athletic commission is good for the state of Nevada."

Reid, a former amateur middleweight boxer and boxing judge, compared his attendance at the boxing matches to tours of water facilities in order to understand water-related legislation or to attendance at a state university's football game.

Reid said he represented the athletic commission and its interests in Washington, D.C., as part of his representation of the state. While Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., paid $1,400 for his seats at a fight he attended with Reid, Reid said he didn't pay because he was in his home state, researching the interests of a part of his constituency.

"Senator McCain is from Arizona. He's not supposed to get free tickets in the state of Nevada," Reid said. "He came here to watch the fight. I came to work for the state of Nevada and to watch the fight. If I were going to a fight with John McCain in Arizona ... I would pay for my ticket."

Reid was speaking alongside Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who was making a pitch at the American Legion Post 8 in downtown Las Vegas that Democrats are the party that best speaks for war veterans. The forum was attended by about 50 Democratic activists and veterans.

Despite the accusations against Reid, Dean didn't back down from his frequently repeated claim that corruption was solely the province of Republicans in Washington. He said Monday's Associated Press report about Reid's attendance at the boxing matches was "nonsense" and "ridiculous."

"It is a Republican culture of corruption," said Dean, the former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential candidate. "We think Republicans and corrupt officeholders, which seem to be one and the same in many cases, will be probably thrown out by the voters. People are tired of it."

Reid said his attendance at boxing matches didn't violate Senate ethics rules, which say senators "should be wary" of gifts aimed at influencing their votes but don't prohibit such gifts.

Reid has been vocal about what he terms Republican corruption. In particular, Reid has pointed to the still-unfolding scandal surrounding Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who recently pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges.

But Republicans point out that Reid accepted donations from groups represented by Abramoff, including at a fundraiser for Reid at Abramoff's firm. Reid has said he won't return the donated money because he did nothing wrong and voted according to what he believed the best policies were.

Republicans say recent corruption scandals in Washington are specific to a few individuals, including some Democrats, and have nothing to do with party affiliation.

"The revelations of Harry Reid's own ethical missteps establish the hypocrisy of Reid's ethical pronouncements," Nevada Republican Party Chairman Paul Adams said Tuesday. "Ethics is an issue with individuals; it is not a partisan issue. For Howard Dean to have any credibility on ethics, he must admit that Reid's behavior is part of the problem in Washington."

The boxing controversy stems from Reid and McCain's failed push for federal boxing regulation in 2004. Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis were forced to fight in Memphis in 2002 because Nevada, as well as Texas and Colorado, wouldn't license Tyson, who has multiple felony convictions and once bit a piece out of another boxer's ear during a fight.

Reid says he became convinced that federal regulation of boxing would ensure uniform standards for the sport.

The bill passed the Senate on a voice vote in March 2004 but died in the House.

Marc Ratner, who was the executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission at the time, told The Associated Press he invited Reid and McCain to a September 2004 bout between Bernard Hopkins and Oscar de la Hoya in part because he wanted to convince them that the state's regulation was sufficient and federal regulation wasn't needed.

Reid said Tuesday he "took care of" Ratner's concerns but didn't drop his push for federal oversight.

Ratner said Tuesday the seats Reid and McCain got weren't tickets available to the general public but "credentials" the commission gives only to public officials hoping to observe the commission's activity.

Skip Avansino, current chairman of the athletic commission and a commission member since 2002, said Reid, McCain and the athletic commissioners sat on folding chairs in a small, cramped area, not in the posh ringside seats for which pricey tickets are sold. Avansino also said the commissioners were too busy to spend much time bending Reid's ear during the fight.

"I do remember Senator Reid visiting," Avansino said. "I would have said hello and welcomed him, and then I have a job to do."

While Ratner may have had an opinion about federal regulation's potential effect on Nevada, Avansino said the commission never took an official position on the federal proposal but merely monitored the bill's progress to see if the commission would be affected.

"I can imagine why he (Reid) would want to watch us in action -- to watch how the scorecards are taken from the judges and what we do with the scorecards -- to see whether there was a need for legislation at the federal level," he said.

Boxing promoter Bob Arum said Reid and McCain also sat in ticketed seating at about three matches each but paid for their tickets "invariably." Arum said McCain and Reid's seats at the Hopkins-de la Hoya fight, on the other hand, were credentials from the commission, not tickets from Arum. But McCain, who brought his wife to the fight, sent Arum a check for the price of two ringside seats.

Arum said he didn't know what to do with the money.

"Those credentials cannot be sold," he said. "There's no price on them. (They are given to) governors, attorney generals, boxing commissioners of other states. ... It's illegal to accept money for a credential."

Arum said he couldn't accept McCain's money but McCain wouldn't take it back, so Arum donated it to Catholic Charities.

Arum said Reid's relationship with boxing is that of a longtime supporter of one of the state's biggest industries, as Reid says.

"Bitter rivals like Don King and myself have each contributed to his campaign," Arum said. "He doesn't favor one promoter over another. He's just a big supporter of the boxing industry in the state of Nevada."

Carl Tobias, a former professor at UNLV's Boyd School of Law who follows Nevada politics from his current post at the University of Richmond, Virginia, said Reid could be expected to protect Nevada's boxing industry in the same way as he would support gaming.

"It's not that anything that was done was wrong, but people could say that this wasn't the best thing to do," Tobias said. "It just had that appearance of, if you're going to regulate something, it doesn't look good" to take gifts.

Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault and Review-Journal writer Kevin Iole contributed to this report.