Permanent Minority Leader?
CONTINETTI, MATTHEW
Permanent Minority Leader? Harry Reid takes over from Tom Daschle. BYMATTHEW CONTINETTI SEARCHLIGHT, NEVADA, is a timeworn desert town of under 600 people about an hour south of Las Vegas....
...So the party has entered one of its introspective moods, and, like a brooding teenager, it is torn between self-loathing (“The leadership of our party has a cultural disconnect,” says Kerry adviser Doug Sosnick) and paranoid fantasies (“The Accuracy of the Voting Results Are Questioned— and Should Be,” reads a headline from the lefty website Buzzflash.net...
...We will...
...his elementary and middle school had two rooms...
...It’s true that he supports U.N...
...he had Matthew Continetti is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Reid had been Daschle’s deputy since 1998, and upon hearing news of his boss’s defeat, he sprang into action...
...He’s voted for the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, or Laci and Conner’s Law...
...Its heyday was long ago, when the promise of gold attracted hard-rock miners to the area’s brown and red hills...
...Reid is against gun control...
...locked up the leadership post...
...And, indeed, he told reporters last week, “I think it’s important here this morning that we talk just one more time about where I come from...
...He always flies into Las Vegas, yet he always makes that extra drive...
...Reid’s office sent out a press release with the headline “Reid to Bring Searchlight Values to Leadership Job...
...The problem is that, unfortunately for Reid, one of the things he shares with Lieberman is a soporific public persona...
...Its time, one would think, has passed...
...But what gold there was is now gone, and with it the miners, gamblers, prostitutes, and other frontier rogues...
...It is no exaggeration to say that Reid has built a mythology around his hometown, which he uses as a metaphor for the American dream...
...His childhood home had no indoor plumbing...
...At 6 A.M...
...He is a convert to Mormonism who is passionate about his faith...
...On things like taxes, affirmative action, and the environment, Reid is more of a mainstream Democrat...
...A lot has happened since the Boston convention...
...they lost seats in the Senate and the House as well...
...I can still see his words on the wall of our home: We can...
...Around the same time he was talking to reporters, Sen...
...I talked to Senator Byrd today,” he said lightheartedly...
...The rusty hills sigh resignedly under the weight of mobile homes...
...For one thing, Reid’s record on abortion is more, um, nuanced than most Democrats...
...Which he did—at length...
...Reid made that extra drive a few days before the election, and was at his home in Searchlight when he found out that Tom Daschle, the Senate minority leader, had lost his seat to Republican John Thune...
...He said he got some paper in Nevada calling...
...They probably have to turn his mike up to hear what he’s saying,” says Sebelius, “but what he’s saying is worth listening to...
...he started calling his fellow Democratic senators to ask for their support, and by 8 A.M...
...Others are less charitable...
...He’s not going to be like Daschle...
...Also, he cosponsored a constitutional amendment to ban flagburning...
...He voted for the 1991 Gulf War, for the second Iraq war, for the $87 billion earmarked for Iraqi and Afghan reconstruction...
...On November 16, Senate Democrats elected Reid to the post of minority leader in the next Congress, which begins January 4. And the requisite newspaper, magazine, television, and radio profiles that followed all mentioned Reid’s humble beginnings as the son of an alcoholic miner...
...It quoted the senator as saying, “I want every American— from Searchlight to the big cities—to have the same opportunities I had, and more...
...And he’s a teetotaler...
...Once the mike is turned up, of course, you are bound to hear something about Searchlight, Nevada...
...He’s soft-spoken...
...When Reid becomes minority leader next year, he will speak for only 44 senators, the lowest number of Democrats since the Great Depression...
...The senator himself is aware of this...
...But he’s also voted for bans on partial-birth abortion...
...Prominently displayed on his website is a picture of him shaking hands with Ronald Reagan...
...Today the town is desolate...
...What Reid didn’t know at the time was that, on Election Day, President Bush would carry Searchlight, Nevada, by 87 votes...
...We must...
...Most of the people I know, if they grew up in Searchlight, their big accomplishment is that they managed to get out,” says Steve Sebelius, political columnist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal...
...He didn’t sound surprised at this, which makes sense, because the person who talks the most about Harry Reid’s childhood in Searchlight, Nevada, is . . . well, Harry Reid...
...Doesn’t sound like much...
...But look at him closely, and it is clear that Reid has more in common with Joe Lieberman than with Nancy Pelosi...
...George W. Bush won Searchlight in a landslide...
...Six years ago, he wrote a book entitled Searchlight: The Camp That Didn’t Fail, which he often reads from during Senate filibusters...
...and his high school education was dependent on whether he could hitchhike each week to school in Henderson, 44 miles north of Searchlight...
...Shortly after Election Day, he appeared at a photo-opportunity with Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry...
...He cosponsored a Senate bill shielding gun manufacturers from lawsuits, and he opposed the assault-weapons ban...
...But then, when only 423 people show up at the polls, 87 votes make for a margin of 20 points...
...These profiles did not escape the senator’s attention...
...he might be taken for the man in the gray flannel suit’s shorter, quieter second cousin...
...Reid’s future was secure...
...A canny behind-thescenes operator, he is also a moderate —some say a conservative...
...The 2004 election established that the Democrats are now a minority party: They not only lost the presidency...
...The three waved and smiled for the cameras...
...And there’s more...
...Reid’s voice is quiet and his appearance plain...
...Maybe Reid can lead the party out of its funk...
...He blends easily into the crowd...
...At 3 A.M., he called Daschle with condolences...
...And, though he opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment, he’s twice supported Nevada’s statewide ban on same-sex marriage...
...There’s been a lot written in the past couple of weeks about me and where I come from,” he said at a press conference shortly after he was elected leader...
...Connecticut’s Chris Dodd, who had toyed with the idea of running for minority leader, didn’t have a chance...
...Then Reid told a story...
...The Democrats’ isn’t...
...He’s voted against resolutions in support of Roe v. Wade...
...He says, ‘I’m going to say nice things about you.’ But, he says, ‘If they ask me, I’m going to tell them we have one complaint about you.’ “I said, ‘What is that, Robert?’ “He says, ‘He never talks loud enough.’” Still, those who have watched Reid the longest insist that beneath the colorless demeanor is a calculating, savvy mind, and a knowledgeable, talented partisan...
...And the liberal columnist Molly Ivins wrote recently that Reid is “charismatically challenged...
...Not Reid...
...Yet Searchlight experienced a sort of renaissance last week, as the national press turned its attention toward the town’s most famous native, Senator Harry Reid...
...And Reid built a house in Searchlight...
...Like this, from Reid’s speech to the Democratic National Convention last July: “On the wall of our home in Searchlight, my mother hung a blue pillowcase with yellow fringe and stitching of a quote by President Roosevelt,” Reid told the crowd, explaining how he came to be a Democrat...
...efforts at population control, opposes the ban on funding for overseas abortions, and, before a bill’s final passage, often votes for amendments that would weaken that bill’s prolife measures...
...He constantly goes back to Searchlight...
...Sebelius, the political columnist, says Reid is “as dry as the martinis he never drinks...
...Joe McCullough, a distinguished professor of English at the University of Nevada Las Vegas who has known Reid for 20 years, puts it more charitably: “Harry’s not charismatic, but he comes across as being extremely genuine...
Vol. 10 • November 2004 • No. 11
