Former Democratic leader Harry Reid dies at 82

President Biden issued a proclamation Wednesday ordering White House flags to be lowered to half-staff in honor of the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

“Throughout his long career of public service, Harry Reid was instrumental in passing landmark legislation that made a positive difference in the lives of countless Americans and made our Nation stronger and safer. His devoted service to our Nation was not about power for power’s sake. It was about the power to do right by the American people,” Biden continued.

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin remembered the late former Sen. Harry Reid who died on Tuesday at the age of 82.

“Most politicians spend a lifetime trying to hide their flaws. Harry would announce them publicly. A lot of politicians like to talk about their log cabin childhood. He wrote a book about growing up in degrading poverty in a troubled family in Searchlight, Nevada. Harry didn’t run away from who he really was. And I think that authenticity is what made him such a powerful effective leader,” he told CNN.

Remembering Reid as a “tough guy when he needed to be,” Durbin noted the former Democratic Senate leader’s contribution to passing the Affordable Care Act.

“Think about that as a legacy, that you helped 10% of the people living in America have the peace of mind to know that they have affordable quality health insurance. That alone was an amazing achievement and Harry was tough enough to get it done,” Durbin said Wednesday.

Durbin, who served as a whip for Reid, said, “Harry inspired me, and a lot of people who work in the Senate today, to keep focused on what the prize is.”

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Vice President Kamala Harris released a statement last night honoring the career of Harry Reid, saying the former Senate majority leader was “kind, generous, and always to the point” when he spoke.

She said the country lost an “honorable public servant.”

Read her full statement:

Despite his blunt political style, former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid inspired fierce respect from many of his fellow lawmakers — even those across the aisle.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who, as the House’s top Democrat for the last 20 years, worked with Reid across the Capitol, called him a “leader of immense courage and ferocious conviction who worked tirelessly to achieve historic progress for the American people.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was frequently at odds with Reid during their lengthy careers, remembered him as a “one-of-a-kind” senator, saying their relationship had transcended political fights.

Reid also used his power to lift up the careers of younger politicians, like Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, whom the former Senate majority leader recruited to run for his seat when he was retiring in 2016.

Former President Barack Obama released a letter he had written to Harry Reid before his death in lieu of a statement.

“As different as we are, I think we both saw something of ourselves in each other - a couple of outsiders who had defied the odds and knew how to take a punch and cared about the little guy. And you know what, we made for a pretty good team,” he added.

Former President Bill Clinton also lauded Reid, remembering him as “one of the most effective Senate leaders our country has ever known.”

“We will likely never see another public servant quite like him—in personality, command of strategy and tactics, and assuredness in marching to the beat of his own drum,” Clinton said in a statement.

Harry Reid, the scrappy former Democratic Senate leader who spearheaded epic legislative battles through three decades in Congress, died on Tuesday at the age of 82.

President Biden, who served with Reid in the Senate, called him one of “the all-time great Senate Majority Leaders in our history” in a statement Tuesday.

He added:

Biden also tweeted a tribute for Reid, calling him “a dear friend and a giant of our history.”

Harry Reid, the scrappy former Democratic Senate leader who spearheaded epic legislative battles through three decades in Congress, has died at the age of 82, according to a statement from his wife, Landra Reid.

Reid rose from humble beginnings in Searchlight, Nevada, to become the most powerful politician in Nevada history, capping off his political career as the Democratic leader in the Senate, including eight years in the majority.

He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2018 and said less than a year later that he was in remission. At the time, he told CNN’s Dana Bash that he felt “very good” and that he was “doing fine.” But Reid responded to his cancer diagnosis with his usual bluntness, telling The New York Times in 2019: “As soon as you discover you have something on your pancreas, you’re dead.”

Despite Reid’s reputation as a hard bargainer with no qualms about scrapping with his opponents, he was also known as a romantic and the most influential person in his life was his wife, Landra. The two met in high school when Reid was 15. Her father was so opposed to the two dating that Reid and his would-be father-in-law got into a fist fight early in their courtship.

Reid, who was raised agnostic, told Bash in 2015 that their opposition was that they wanted their daughter to marry someone Jewish. They eloped in 1959 during college, converting to Mormonism a year later. Her parents finally came around on him.

Read more about Reid’s life here.