Harry Reid, the pugnacious son of a Nevada hard-rock miner who rose from poverty to become the U.S. Senate majority leader and earned a reputation as a fierce partisan fighter during an era of political gridlock in Washington, died on Tuesday. He was 82.
Reid, a former amateur boxer who represented Nevada in the U.S. Congress as a Democrat for more than three decades, died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, his wife of 62 years, Landra, said in a statement.
“We are so proud of the legacy he leaves behind both on the national stage and his beloved Nevada,” Landra Reid said.
As majority leader, Reid served as President Barack Obama’s point man in the Senate and helped secure congressional passage of Obama’s signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare, in 2010 over furious Republican opposition.
Obama on Tuesday posted to social media a recent letter he had written to Reid:
“You were a great leader in the Senate, and early on you were more generous to me than I had any right to expect,” Obama said in the letter. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination.”
Reid retired in 2016, one year after suffering broken ribs and facial bones, and injuring an eye in an accident while exercising at home.
He had ascended to the job of majority leader in 2007 after the Democrats won control of the Senate. Despite being a political moderate who differed from others in his party on abortion, the environment and gun control, Reid regularly clashed with the Republicans and maintained poor relations with the opposition party’s congressional leaders.
“I always would rather dance than fight but I know how to fight,” Reid said in 2004, in a reference to his boxing career.
In 2012, Mitch McConnell, then the Senate’s top Republican, labeled Reid “the worst leader in the Senate ever”…
Source : france24
