Countdown to November: Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada

Rush talks about Harry Reid enough on his program, so I'm sure all my readers know who he is. However for the sake of completeness in this series, here is his bio from Wikipedia. Will he be relected in November?

Harry Mason Reid (born December 2, 1939) is the senior United States Senator from Nevada and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected to the Senate in 1986, he was re-elected in 1992, 1998, and 2004, and is currently seeking a fifth term in 2010.

Reid has been the Senate Majority Leader since January 2007, having previously served as Minority Leader from 2005 until the Democrats won control of the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. He earlier served as Senate Minority Whip (1999–2001, 2001, 2003–2005) and Senate Majority Whip (2001, 2001–2003).

Before his election to the Senate, Reid was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Nevada's 1st congressional district from 1983 to 1987. A native of Searchlight and graduate of Utah State University and George Washington University Law School, he previously served as city attorney of Henderson (1964–1966), a member of the Nevada Assembly (1969–1970), Lieutenant Governor of Nevada (1970–1974), and chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission (1977–1981).

Early life
Reid was born in Searchlight, Nevada, the son of Inez and Harry Reid, a miner in the camp 50 miles southeast of Las Vegas. He attended Basic High School in Henderson, Nevada, where he boarded in town and played football and was an amateur boxer. While at Basic he met future Nevada governor Mike O'Callaghan, who was a teacher there. Reid attended Southern Utah University and Utah State University.

Reid graduated from George Washington University Law School with a J.D. while working for the United States Capitol Police. He returned to Nevada after law school and served as Henderson city attorney before being elected to the Nevada Assembly in 1968. In 1970, at age 30, Reid was chosen by O'Callaghan as his running mate for Lieutenant Governor of Nevada.

Political career: since 1966
Nevada politics: 1966–1981
Reid and his mentor O'Callaghan won the race and Reid served as lieutenant governor until 1974, when he ran for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Alan Bible. He lost by fewer than 600 votes to former Governor Paul Laxalt. In 1975, Reid ran for mayor of Las Vegas and lost again, this time to Bill Briare.

Reid then served as chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission from 1977 to 1981, a post that subjected him to death threats. Jack Gordon also tried to bribe Reid. Reid allowed the FBI to tape Gordon's attempt to bribe him with $12,000. Reid lost his temper and attempted to choke Gordon, "You son of a bitch, you tried to bribe me!", and was pulled off by FBI agents. Gordon was convicted in United States district court in 1979 and sentenced to six months in prison. In 1981, Reid's wife found a bomb attached to one of their cars, a bomb Reid suspects was placed by Gordon.

U.S. Representative: 1983–1987
Prior to the 1980 Census, Nevada had only a single at-large member in the United States House of Representatives, but population growth in the 1970s resulted in the state picking up a second district. Reid won the Democratic nomination for the 1st district, based in Las Vegas, in 1982, and easily won the general election. He served two terms in the House, from 1983 to 1987.

U.S. Senator: since 1987
In 1986, Reid won the Democratic nomination for the seat of retiring two-term incumbent Paul Laxalt. He defeated former at-large Congressman Jim Santini, a Democrat who had turned Republican, in the November election. He coasted to reelection in 1992. However, he barely defeated 1st District Congressman John Ensign in 1998 in the midst of a statewide Republican sweep.

In 2004, Reid won reelection with 61 percent of the vote, gaining the endorsement of several Republicans.

Ensign was elected to Nevada's other Senate seat in 2000. He and Reid have a very good relationship, despite their bruising contest in 1998. The two frequently work together on Nevada issues.

Leadership
From 1999 to 2005, Reid served as Senate Democratic Whip, as minority whip from 1999 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005, then as majority whip from 2001 to 2003 (except for a brief period from January–May 2001). From 2001 to 2003, he served as chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee.

Reid succeeded Tom Daschle as minority leader in 2005 and became majority leader after the 2006 elections. He was re-elected majority leader without opposition by the Democratic caucus on November 18, 2008, winning all 57 votes.

Committee memberships
Select Committee on Intelligence (Ex officio)
Reelection bid in 2010
While Reid is the front runner for the Democratic nomination, he faces a competitive general election for the 2010 Senate race in Nevada. Reid has engaged in a $1 million media campaign to "reintroduce himself" to Nevada's voters. As of March 2010, he trailed his potential Republican opponents by over ten percentage points in aggregate RealClearPolitics polling.

As of June 2010, however, according to some polls, Reid closed the gap on Republican front runner Lowden to within a few points 42%-39% (the poll has margin of 4.5 percentage points). The Reid-versus-Lowden polls lost relevancy when, on June 8, 2010, Lowden lost the Republican primary to Sharron Angle.

Political positions
A method that some political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU). Reid has scored a lifetime conservative rating of 19% from the ACU, and a 2008 liberal rating of 70% from the ADA. Other independent ratings include a 29% rating from NARAL in 2003, and a 57% rating from Planned Parenthood in 2006.

Reid has spearheaded several initiatives while in Congress. In 2006 Reid co-sponsored the "Prevention First Amendment" with Hillary Clinton, which would fund abortion prevention efforts, such as giving women broader access to contraception; however the bill faced Republican opposition and failed.

In January 2007, Reid brought a Senate ethics reform bill to a vote to bar congressional members from accepting gifts, meals, and trips from lobbyists and organizations employing them, as well as barring Senators from borrowing corporate jets for travel and compelling them to disclose the names of sponsors, or authors, of bills and specific projects. The bill passed 96 to 2.

Regarding specific issues, Reid believes that Roe vs. Wade should be overturned and in 1999, he voted against an amendment that explicitly expressed support for Roe v. Wade. He has stated that he believes in a restricted right to abortion, stating that "abortions should be legal only when the pregnancy resulted from incest, rape, or when the life of the woman is endangered".

He has also voted several times to ban the "intact dilation and evacuation" or "partial-birth abortion" procedure. Reid has voted against the Nelson-Hatch-Casey amendment in the Senate which proposed to ban federal funding of health care plans that cover abortion, and has supported embryonic stem cell research.

Regarding same-sex marriage, Reid has stated he believes "...marriage should be between a man and a woman". He voted in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act but against the Federal Marriage Amendment.

In regard to local issues, Reid has firmly opposed the proposed Yucca Mountain federal nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

Reid called immigration reform one of his top priorities for the 110th Congress and supports the DREAM Act which would make it easier for young people who are not citizens of the United States but are permanent residents to attend college or university in the United States.He also opposed a Constitutional amendment to make English the national language of the United States. In June 2009, Reid announced his intention to enact a new guest worker program as part of a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

Reid has supported the use of force in the Middle East but has called for a drastic change in strategy. In January 1991 he voted to authorize military force in Iraq to liberate Kuwait,quoting John F. Kennedy's 1963 State of the Union speech on the Senate floor, saying "the mere absence of war is not Peace." He also voted in support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and in March 2007 he voted in favor of "redeploying US troops out of Iraq by March 2008". Later that year, however, he said, "As long as we follow [President Bush's] path in Iraq, the war is lost."

Criticism
Over the years Reid has been the subject of several criticisms from both sides of the political aisle. Liberal critics argue that Reid is not doing enough to end the American military presence in Iraq, and that he allowed Senate Republicans to create a 60-vote bar for passage of bills without a Democratic fillibuster.

Reid has also been criticized for several potentially self-enriching tactics. In 2005 Reid earmarked a spending bill to provide for building a bridge between Nevada and Arizona that would make land he owned more valuable. Reid called funding for construction of a bridge over the Colorado River, among other projects, 'incredibly good news for Nevada' in a news release after passage of the 2005 transportation bill. He owned 160 acres (65 ha) of land several miles from the proposed bridge site in Arizona. The bridge could add value to his real estate investment.

A year later it was reported that Reid had used campaign donations to pay for $3,300 in Christmas gifts to the staff at the condominium where he resides; federal election law prohibits candidates from using political donations for personal use. Reid's staff stated that his attorneys had approved use of the funds in this manner but that he nonetheless would personally reimburse his campaign for the expenses. That action notwithstanding, the conservative group Citizens United announced it had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission to investigate the matter.

A series of investigative reports in the Los Angeles Times suggested that Reid had introduced legislation and imposed pressure on regulatory agencies to advance the business interests of his close friend Harvey Whittemore, a Nevada attorney-lobbyist who contributed heavily to Reid's campaigns and leadership fund and whose personal attorney was Reid's son Leif. With Reid's help, Whittemore was able to proceed with construction of a $30 billion planned golf course development, Coyote Springs, a project heavily criticized by environmental groups for reasons including its projected effects on several endangered species.

In 2006, the National Republican Senatorial Committee attempted to associate Reid with the Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal by pointing out he had "received more than $50,000 from four tribes with gaming interests between 2001 and 2004 after they hired Abramoff". Reid denied any wrongdoing, and media reported that the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group, had produced an analysis showing a general increase in the amount and number of contributions by Indian tribes since the late 1990s.

Reid apologized on January 9, 2010, for racially charged comments he had made when President Obama was campaigning for president. In private conversations, Reid had remarked that Obama could win the Presidency because the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama—who he referred to as being "light-skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one". These comments had been recently revealed by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in Game Change, their book about the 2008 election. In addition to his public apology, Reid called President Obama to apologize; Obama accepted his apology, stating that as far as he was concerned, the book was closed on the incident.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Senators John Cornyn and Jon Kyl called on Reid to resign his leadership position in the Senate citing Majority Leader Trent Lott resigning because of a statement relating to race. However, this has virtually no chance of happening according to multiple experts. DNC Chairman Tim Kaine and Senators Dianne Feinstein and Jack Reed expressed support for Reid and confidence he would retain his leadership position, and another senior Democrat indicated Reid has "produced supportive statements from key African American leaders in the Congress and civil rights community".

Cultural and political image
Part of Harry Reid's confrontation with Frank Rosenthal while chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission is reenacted in the 1995 movie Casino. Reid had a role in the movie Traffic (2000), in which he played himself. He appeared along with Senator Sam Brownback and then Senator Barack Obama in the 2007 documentary film Sand and Sorrow, which details the genocide in Sudan.

Reid was elected to the Gaming Hall of Fame in 2001.

National opinion polls have shown Senate Majority Leader Reid's job approval to be low or unfavorable. An October 2007 Las Vegas Review-Journal favorability poll indicated 51 percent of Nevadans view Reid unfavorably, with 32 percent indicating favorability.[60] A December 2007 Las Vegas Review-Journal job approval poll showed 42 percent of Nevadans rating Reid "poor," 41 percent "excellent or good," and 16 percent "only fair."[61] A November 2009 Rasmussen poll, showed that 25% of polled voters have a favorable opinion of Reid, while 47% view him unfavorably.

Family and personal life
In 1959, Reid married his high school sweetheart, Landra Gould. They have five children, a daughter and four sons. Their eldest son, Rory Reid, is an elected Commissioner for Clark County, Nevada, and another son recently ran for municipal office in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

Reid is a first generation member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon or LDS Church).Reid and his wife, who was born to Jewish immigrant parents and grew up in Henderson, converted to Mormonism while Reid was a college student. In a 2001 interview he said, "I think it is much easier to be a good member of the Church and a Democrat than a good member of the Church and a Republican."

He went on to say that the Democrats' emphasis on helping others, as opposed to what he considers Republican dogma to the contrary, is the reason he's a Democrat. He delivered a speech at Brigham Young University to about 20,000 students on October 9, 2007, in which he expressed his opinion that Democratic values mirror Mormon values.

Reid remains active in his congregations in Washington and Nevada, though he contrasts with the generally conservative Mormon population in the United States. Several Republican Mormons in Utah have contested his faith because of his politics, such as his private comments that the church's backing of California's Proposition 8 wasted resources.