‘100 semesters’ cut Reid’s personal wealth

Unlike many other members of Congress, it appears Sen. Harry Reid actually lost wealth during his past decade in public office.

A project unveiled last week by the Sunlight Foundation, a public interest group, attempts to calculate lawmakers' net worth compared to when they first got to Washington.

In Reid's case, the group used figures from 1995, when congressional finance reports were modernized. Reid's first year in Congress was 1983.

The foundation calculated Reid's personal wealth, mainly in Nevada property and mining interests, at a net average $5.4 million a decade ago.

That amount had dropped to $3.3 million by 2006, the most recent year that numbers were available from reports lawmakers file with the House and Senate, the group figured.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers said the numbers were generally accurate.

"He sold most of the land he had to put each of his five kids through college -- 100 semesters," Summers said in explaining the decrease.

Lawmakers file personal finance reports each May. The newest ones, covering 2007, began to be made public in the past several days, but not in time to be included in the study.

The Sunlight Foundation, like the Center for Responsive Politics, another group that tracks money in politics, tried to pinpoint wealth by averaging reported assets and liabilities, although it cautioned the numbers are not precise.

Congress does not require lawmakers to report exact values. Rather, their assets can be listed in broad categories of value. They are not required to disclose the value of their personal residences.

The report can be viewed online at http://fortune535.sunlightprojects.org.

In the Nevada delegation, Rep. Shelley Berkley showed the most dramatic increase in wealth after she married Dr. Larry Lehrner, a Las Vegas kidney specialist, in 1999.

Berkley's financial worth jumped from a net average $451,000 as a House freshman elected in 1998 to $12 million by 2006, the foundation calculated.

Rep. Jon Porter reported a net $4.4 million his freshman year of 2002. By 2006 it had grown to $5.1 million.

Sen. John Ensign's wealth grew from $2.4 million when he was elected to the Senate in 2000 to $3.8 million in 2006.

Porter and Ensign aides said the figures were generally accurate.

Each said the increase was because of asset appreciation.

Sunlight Foundation staffers were re-examining their calculations for freshman Rep. Dean Heller after a possible error was pointed out to them.

Using the foundation's formula, the Review-Journal calculated Heller's average net worth dipped from $2.8 million to $2.4 million in the year since he was elected. His office had no comment.

The foundation calculated that, out of 535 Senate and House members, 333 showed wealth increases over their careers in Congress and 232 appeared to be millionaires.

The foundation sought to make another point. While more than half the members of Congress appear to be worth $1 million or more, the net worth of the average American family in 2006 was $93,000, it said.

BOOKING IT

Sen. Harry Reid threw a book party last Tuesday in Washington and everybody showed up. At least it seemed that way.

Reid's political action committee, the Searchlight Leadership Fund, rented out the fancy new Wolfgang Puck restaurant, The Source, which is attached to the Newseum, the just-opened journalism museum on Pennsylvania Avenue.

For most of several hours, two floors of the restaurant were shoulder-to-shoulder packed with lobbyists, operatives, Capitol Hill staffers, senators and journalists.

Reid signed copies of "The Good Fight," his book about his hardscrabble youth in dusty Searchlight, his rise to prominence and his more recent exercises of power as Senate majority leader.

With wife Landra at his side, Reid told the crowd he wrote it to show that "if I can make it anyone can make it."

Profits from the $25.95 book are going to charity but Reid has yet to decide where exactly, a spokesman said.

Among the celebrities, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dropped by the party, as did Washington Post scribe Bob Woodward. The newspaper Roll Call reported that Sen. Max Baucus' black BMW got scratched up while being valet-parked.

The event served a second purpose. In a VIP room on the first floor, about 100 donors paid to attend a Reid fundraiser, spending time with the Senate leader before he joined the party.

A Reid spokesman declined to say how much admission cost or how much money was raised at the fundraiser. One thing was confirmed: Most of the donors left with an autographed book.

MORE BOOK NOTES

On page three of his new book, "The Good Fight," Reid notes he has made no secret of his antipathy for President Bush.

But in another book released this year, a former senator from Rhode Island describes Reid as an enabler of the unpopular president.

Republican Lincoln Chafee, who lost his bid in 2006 for a second full term in the Senate, writes in "Against the Tide" that unlike Reid, he voted in October 2002 against authorizing Bush to go to war against Iraq.

"I was the only candidate in the (2006 Rhode Island Senate) race with a record of standing up to entrenched powers, but a parade of Democratic Bush enablers came to Rhode Island to campaign for my opponent," Chafee wrote, referring to Sheldon Whitehouse, now a Democratic senator.

"I was both irked and amused at this irony of politics," he said. "Senators Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), and others who had voted for the war in Iraq, urged my constituents, at this critical time in history, to elect one more of their own, as I saw it."

In his book, Reid comes as close as he ever has to making an apology for his vote.

"I am sorry I didn't ask more questions," he writes. "But I am also sorry I was lied to."

BLUE IN THE FACE

In the South, a "yellow dog Democrat" is someone who will vote for the name on the ballot with a "D" next to it, even if the candidate is a yellow dog.

A "blue dog" is a yellow dog that's been strangled. Or, as Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., put it, "We feel like we've been choked blue by the extremes of both parties."

Ross was speaking on a conference call with reporters announcing that his group, the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, has endorsed Jill Derby, who hopes to unseat Rep. Dean Heller in Nevada's 2nd Congressional District.

Derby also had the group's endorsement two years ago, when Heller beat her.

Democrats are crowing, and Republicans are bracing themselves for a bad year, after Democrats won three recent special elections in historically Republican districts. Two of the winners, Don Cazayoux of Louisiana and Travis Childers of Mississippi, were endorsed by the Blue Dogs.

The endorsement will bring campaign support from the group and its PAC, Ross said.

Stephens Washington Bureau writer Tony Batt contributed to this report. Contact political reporter Molly Ball at mball @reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.