EDITORIAL: Reid’s run unmatched in Nevada history

To say Harry Reid belongs on Nevada’s hypothetical Mount Rushmore suggests that three other people have wielded influence comparable to the longtime U.S. senator. In reality, no other figure in Nevada’s 150-year history has built as much power for himself — and as much leverage for the state — as the Searchlight native, who announced Friday morning that he would not seek re-election to a sixth term.

Sen. Reid’s surprising decision, revealed in a statement and YouTube video posted when most Nevadans were still asleep, was an earthquake felt across the state’s political landscape. The scrambling within the Democratic Party to take Sen. Reid’s place on the 2016 ballot, and the reconsideration by several potential Republican candidates who were reluctant to challenge him, is just the beginning.

The gaming industry is losing its go-to ally. Supporters of the Yucca Mountain Project, which Sen. Reid has fought his entire Senate career, will be emboldened to press for nuclear waste storage in Nevada. Will Nevada retain its early spot on the presidential primary/caucus calendar once Sen. Reid leaves office next year? He’s the reason we have first-in-the-West status. Who will take the controls of the Democratic Party machine and attract the kind of national financial support Sen. Reid commands?

When the calendar turns to 2017, Nevada will enter a new era that was almost unimaginable before Friday.

So will Washington. And that won’t be a bad thing.

The Senate minority leader will get a 21-month farewell tour in office. Already, he is being lauded by his allies and slammed by his harshest critics. This divisiveness is a predictable result of the dysfunctional climate he helped create in Washington, then worsened as he went about the business of protecting President Barack Obama and the Senate majority he led for eight years. It wasn’t just the procedural maneuvering, the filibustering and the obstruction. It wasn’t just the nastiness, the deflection, the playing of race and gender cards and the demonization of opposing views. It was Sen. Reid’s insistence that he and his party couldn’t be blamed for congressional approval ratings anchored below 20 percent.

Perhaps when Sen. Reid leaves Congress, some of the bad blood between the parties will leave with him.

Sen. Reid solidified his reputation as a master tactician in winning re-election in 2010 when the tea party movement gave Republicans control of the House. But even his best-laid plans couldn’t prevent the Republican wave of 2014, which returned him to the position of minority leader. The bill finally had come due for his work in passing Obamacare.

Sen. Reid, 75, has had health problems in recent years. He suffered broken ribs and a serious eye injury in a freak exercise accident at his Henderson home this year. His wife, Landra, has battled cancer. But he insists he isn’t retiring because of medical concerns. He simply decided it was time. He has worked in elected and public service for about 50 years, including stints as Henderson city attorney, assemblyman, lieutenant governor, Gaming Commission chairman and U.S. representative. He’ll exit politics on his own terms.

There will never be another Harry Reid.