In 1998, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid paid $400,000 for two pieces of residential land outside Las Vegas. It was a complicated deal. Reid secretly transferred ownership of the property to a company set up by his friend and lawyer Jay Brown, who then convinced the local government to re-zone the land for commercial development. In 2004, Brown sold it to a group of developers and Reid walked away with $1.1 million.
“The complex dealings allowed Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Brown’s company without public knowledge, but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later,” the Associated Press reported in 2006. “Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal during an AP interview.”
It was a classic Harry Reid transaction: legal but a little shady, and undoubtedly lucrative. Business deals like that allowed Reid to do very well during his years in the Senate, spent of late in a luxury condominium in Washington’s Ritz Carlton.
And now, in announcing he will not run for re-election in 2016, Reid says, “We’ve got to be more concerned about the country, the Senate, the state of Nevada than about ourselves.”
In the years before he wanted to be more concerned about the country, the Senate, and the state of Nevada than himself, Reid did very well in the Senate. He enriched himself, took care of his family and created a political machine that propelled him to re-election even when Nevadans didn’t like him.
Literally. In 2010, when Reid was last re-elected, exit polls found that 55 percent of voters disapproved of the job he was doing, while 44 percent approved. The same number, 55 percent, said he had been in Washington too long. And yet Reid won.
Two reasons. The first was that Reid had about the worst opponent one could imagine in Republican Sharron Angle. And even then, Reid won just 50.3 percent of the vote. (Reid had a true near-death experience in 1998 against a better GOP candidate, John Ensign, winning by just 428 votes.)
The second reason for Reid’s victory was the political machine, powered by union money — funding an attack campaign that did almost as much damage to Angle as she did to herself — and expressed in bus after bus taking service workers from Las Vegas hotels and casinos to vote early for Reid. Republicans cried fraud, as they have in the past, but nothing came of it.
Now Reid is headed out the door. Could he have won again in 2016? He almost certainly would have faced a better Republican candidate than Angle. And there would have been lots of stories about how unpopular Reid is in his own home state. But the machine would have revved up again, ready to push a disliked candidate over the top.
Up until the moment he announced he would not run, Reid kept up a confident — and slightly threatening — face. For example, when asked in 2014 about the possibility that popular Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval would challenge him, Reid said, “I don’t know, and I really don’t care. He’s a super nice guy, and I’m not sure he would want to do that. But that’s up to him.” Loose translation: “Nice career you’ve got there, governor — shame if anything were to happen to it.” Whoever ran against Reid would have faced a very tough race.
So what about a 2016 campaign without Harry Reid? Republicans will have a better chance, and the Nevada Senate contest will be a very big deal. The Cook Political Report has already classified the race — candidates TBA — as “the first toss-up race of the cycle.” As for Reid, the former leader will have a comfortable new life, thanks to some of those savvy investments he made while looking out for country, Senate and state.
