Mitt Romney may be the most famous Mormon politician, but the title of highest-ranking elected Latter-day Saint in U.S. history belongs not to a rich Utah Republican with a patrician background and deep family ties in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but rather to a self-made Nevada Democrat with hardscrabble roots who converted to the faith.
His name: Harry Reid.
Passionately partisan, fiercely loyal and discreetly devout, Reid, who died in 2021, rose to majority leader in the U.S. Senate, where the onetime boxer fought for landmark Democratic victories on Obamacare, financial reforms and an economic stimulus package.
He was ruthless and religious — an LBJ without the swearing, a legislative leviathan on Capitol Hill and yet a man praised by then-apostle M. Russell Ballard for an abiding faith rarely seen by outsiders.
In these edited excerpts from a recent “Mormon Land” podcast, political journalist Jon Ralston, author of the new biography, “The Game Changer: How Harry Reid Remade the Rules and Showed Democrats How to Fight,” discusses the fascinating rise of the real Harry Reid:
(Nevada Independent; Simon & Schuster) Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston and his new book, "The Game Changer."
Reid was born in Searchlight, Nevada. How did that tiny town shape him?
He was forged a lot by his early years in Searchlight and then in another town by the name of Henderson, which was somewhat larger. But in Searchlight, he lived in unimaginable poverty. He really grew up in a shack. That’s not an exaggeration. … There was no running water. … The town had just a couple of hundred people. No amenities of any kind. And he became tough because of that. I think he both loved and hated Searchlight. He named his PAC [political action committee] after Searchlight, the Searchlight Leadership Fund. … He also said to me when I interviewed him for the book, “I just wanted to get the hell out of Searchlight.” And he did. … He was driven to do more than what that little town offered him.
How did he end up becoming a Latter-day Saint?
His wife, Landra, was raised Jewish, and that caused some family friction when they were dating. … When they married and went to Utah, they were influenced by some key LDS people: one was their landlord and another was a person Landra got to know through her job. She had a job while Harry was going to school. One day he had an epiphany. He was going down to his basement abode, and he saw the family, the Mormon family, having dinner and talking to one another, which is something he had never experienced. His mom and dad fought a lot. … And so they started to learn about the LDS Church, and Landra told me in an interview that they decided they would both convert because they didn’t want religion to be contentious in their life the way it had been when they were dating. They both liked the precepts of the LDS Church, and so they converted.
Talk about his lifelong love affair with Landra.
(Jim Wilson | The New York Times) Sen. Harry Reid and his wife, Landra, celebrate an election victory in 2010.
Harry Reid had some rough edges, but this is a true love story. They met when they were 19 years old in high school, and you see how he talked about her and she talked about him. [Sen.] Chuck Schumer said the only time he ever saw Reid really distressed was when Landra was in a car accident, and he saw tears streaming down Reid’s face. And Reid was never a person to show those kinds of emotions to anybody. But they adored each other. One of his staffers said to me, “You could see it when one or the other walked into a room, their faces would light up.” And that was true until the end.
I tell a story in the book about how much she influenced him [as a political adviser] in his vote against Clarence Thomas being confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Reid was going to vote in favor of Thomas, and he changed his mind. I asked Landra how that happened, and she said, “He trusted me because I watched every hearing. … And so he listened to me, and I told him I believe Anita Hill [who had accused Thomas of sexual harassment].”
Reid became head of the Nevada Gaming Commission. Did he ever gamble?
No, he did not, to my knowledge. … Reid was a master at compartmentalization. And so gaming was and is the biggest industry in Nevada. You had to deal with these [casino owners]. They gave a lot of money to campaigns. And Reid saw himself as a protector of the industry, even though he wasn’t a guy you could find at the craps table. … So he somehow managed to reconcile the church’s opposition to gambling with supporting people who actually made money from gambling.
What were Reid’s ties to the infamous Howard Hughes and the so-called Mormon mafia.
Howard Hughes had this empire on the Las Vegas Strip. ... Gov. Mike O’Callaghan ... went to Reid and said, “I trust you. I want you to go find out what his health really is like.” ... And so Reid traveled to Utah, to California and other places in Nevada, found members of the so-called Mormon mafia who surrounded Hughes and were kind of his palace guards, and he interviewed him and kept detailed notes on legal pads, which was Reid’s signature way to keep notes about anything throughout his entire life. I found these notes, and they’re incredibly descriptive, and they eventually led O’Callaghan to have a meeting with Hughes in London, of all places, in which he decided for himself that Hughes was sound of mind and body enough, at least, even though he was somewhat frail already by then [and] quite eccentric.
Discuss Reid’s devotion — much of it private — to his religion.
(Brendan Smialowski | The New York Times) Sen. Harry Reid works on a speech in his office in 2009.
He was much more devout than I realized. He taught Sunday school. He and Landra read scriptures together in the evenings. He was not on the party circuit in D.C. He was a real homebody. He and Landra stayed together, and they talked about the church and the scriptures. But it did affect him in the sense that he was pro-life throughout his career. And you think about how weird this is — a pro-life guy being a leader of the Democratic Party, and so he knew that would be a difficult needle to thread. And again, talking about how you can compartmentalize: There were some very, very pro-choice women in that caucus, Sens. Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray and others. And I interviewed them for the book, and they said that he always gave them the space for their issues. They knew he was going to vote against certain things, but that he wasn’t going to prevent them from bringing their issues to the floor. And so he was a very religious man.
Reid famously accused Mitt Romney, without any real evidence, in 2012 of not paying taxes for more than a decade. How did this allegation come about?
He had been told, apparently by Jon Huntsman Sr., something about Romney not paying his taxes. The story changed. First it was that he didn’t pay his taxes for 10 years. Then he never paid his right amount or fair share or whatever. And so Reid went to the [Barack] Obama campaign and said, “You’ve got to say this.” And they didn’t want any part of it because, of course, Reid couldn’t prove it. It was hearsay, and his staff said, “Please don’t say this out loud. It’s going to cause a lot of problems.” But of course, Reid, who was hard to contain, and, as I like to say, had no self-editing mechanism, at one point, with a twinkle in his eye at the end of an interview with a couple of political reporters, just blurted out, “Hey, did you know that Mitt Romney didn’t pay his taxes?” Of course, that became the lead of their story, and it became a sensation. He repeated it on the Senate floor, of all places, and he never could prove it. …
What’s even more amazing about it … is that he never regretted it. In fact, even until his death, his only regret, he said, in public life was voting for the Iraq War. Nothing else.
What was his relationship with Romney?
Harry Reid … worked very hard to get where he was. And he thought Mitt Romney was born with a silver spoon. And he did not like people like that.
How did President Obama get along with Reid?
President Barack Obama with members of the congressional leadership, including Sen. Harry Reid, in 2009.
Obama loved Reid, and Reid loved Obama. They didn’t always get along, and sometimes Reid thought that Obama should stay out of his legislative business. … I did an interview with Obama, and he gave Reid all the credit in the world for passing Obamacare. … Obama gave a eulogy for Reid at his funeral that was really moving. … They couldn’t have been more different, but Harry Reid was just so taken by Obama when he came to the Senate, and what a gifted orator he was, and he told Obama to run for president.
(Kenny Holston | The New York Times) Former President Barack Obama eulogizes the late Sen. Harry Reid at his memorial service in Las Vegas.
What do you think most observers get wrong about Harry Reid?
People paint him in one dimension … that he was this hopeless partisan hack who had no regard for any other human being and would do anything to win. Now, part of that is true, but there was another side to him. I mentioned Landra and that love affair. But he was also incredibly, incredibly kind to his staff. …
One staffer was hired early in her career to just take down phone numbers and give them to Reid. And he kept calling these numbers, and they were the wrong number. He called her into his office, and she thought she was going to get fired. And he looked at her and said, “You have an issue, don’t you?” And she said, “Yeah, I’m dyslexic.” She thought the next words would be “you’re fired.” Instead, his next words were “it must be so much harder for you to get where you’ve gotten than most people. Just keep trying.” So there was a kinder, gentler side to Harry Reid.
Note to readers • To hear the podcast, go to sltrib.com/podcasts/mormonland. To receive ad-free “Mormon Land” episodes, along with our complete newsletter and access to all Tribune religion content, support us at Patreon.com/mormonland. This story is available on Patreon and to Tribune subscribers. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
David is a managing editor at The Tribune, where he has worked since 1984. He oversees coverage ranging from local government and west-side issues to growth, development and housing. In addition, he directs religion reporting, co-hosts the award-winning “Mormon Land” podcast and writes the Mormon Land newsletter.
Hired in 1991 to cover Utah's various faiths, particularly Mormonism, Peggy has talked forgiveness with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, nearly fainted waiting for the Dalai Lama, fasted with Muslims during Ramadan — and has reported on 50 consecutive semiannual LDS General Conferences.