McCain had complicated relationship with Nevada, Harry Reid

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., may have been a lawmaker from a neighboring state, but his Senate actions and positions as a GOP presidential candidate reverberated through Nevada over the past two decades.

Just this summer, McCain, as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, heeded a request from fellow Republican Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada to strip a rider out of a final defense bill to fund nuclear waste disposal at the proposed Yucca Mountain repository.

But McCain supported a permanent nuclear waste storage site, and once as a presidential candidate backed Yucca Mountain as that site, although he opposed transporting waste through Arizona.

The Yucca Mountain project was later shelved by President Barack Obama, at the behest of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who fought to keep a nuclear waste repository out of Nevada.

Over the years, McCain and Reid found themselves at odds, but they often worked together on issues of shared beliefs or matters that affected their respective states.

They joined together to name a bypass over the Colorado River after Reid’s mentor, the late Nevada Gov. Mike O’Callaghan, and war hero Pat Tillman, a former Arizona Cardinals linebacker who joined the Army and died from friendly fire in Afghanistan.

McCain, 81, a war hero whose Navy jet was shot down over North Vietnam, died Saturday at his ranch in Sedona, Arizona, after a yearlong battle with brain cancer.

Reid, in a statement, said he and McCain had a final telephone call “a few weeks ago” where the two said to each other, “I love you.”

“That was how we felt about one another,” Reid said. “There will never be another John McCain.”

The sweet science

McCain and Reid, 78, came into the House in 1982 and joined the Senate together in 1986. They both had an affinity for boxing and had boxed in their youth. O’Callaghan coached Reid, and McCain boxed at the U.S. Naval Academy.

McCain championed a bill in 1998 with former Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., that required promoters and managers to make financial disclosures to boxers, as well as provide financial and health safeguards to participants of the sport. The bill was named for Muhammad Ali and enacted in 2000.

McCain and Reid so loved the sport they were ringside at a boxing match in Las Vegas in early 2004.

But despite their mutual interests, not everything was smooth between McCain and Reid. There were verbal and legislative fights, disagreements and some name calling.

Reid, who backed Obama’s presidential candidacy in 2008 over McCain, openly questioned the Arizona senator’s temperament to be commander in chief.

And at a brown-bag lunch at the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2008, before the election, Reid declared: “I can’t stand John McCain.”

‘A long history’

Nonetheless, the two worked across partisan divides on immigration reform, judicial and executive appointments and spending bills.

“We have a long history,” McCain told Politico in 2013 about his relationship with Reid.

“We have had our clashes and our words that we wish we hadn’t (said) about each other. But there’s a bond that’s very deep and long between us,” McCain said.

When Reid announced in May that he would undergo surgery to remove a tumor from his pancreas, McCain tweeted: “From one cantankerous senator to another, sending my prayers & best wishes to @SenatorReid as he recovers from a successful surgery.”

In the Senate, McCain reveled in his role as a maverick. Some of the positions he took angered GOP leaders, President Donald Trump and Nevada politicians and business interests.

He poked the casino industry when he pushed legislation sought by the National Collegiate Athletic Association to ban gambling on college sports due to concerns about potential point-shaving.

The 2001 bill irked then-Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who told The New York Times that between 97 and 99 percent of sports gambling was done illegally and outside regulated casinos.

“To think that doing something about this tiny percentage in Nevada is going to do anything constructive is ludicrous,” Ensign said.

McCain reversed his position on collegiate gambling several years ago.

Water fight

As a presidential candidate in 2000, McCain also called for renegotiating the 1922 Colorado River Compact that divvied up water from the river to Western states, including Nevada.

The proposal stirred emotions from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez, with most characterizing it as a water grab for Arizona, California and Nevada.

But Silver State officials also worried the proposal would be advantageous to more populous Arizona and Southern California, since future flows would be based on population.

McCain’s proposal went nowhere, and years later he joined Reid to name the U.S. Highway 93 Hoover Dam bypass near Boulder City the Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge.

The bridge and bypass, to this day, provide a quick traffic route between Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Contact Gary Martin at gmartin@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7390. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.