Former US Senate majority chief Harry Reid has died on the age of 82.
Washington:
Former US Senate majority chief Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who rose from humble beginnings to guide the higher chamber through the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, died Tuesday. He was 82.
“I’m heartbroken to announce the passing of my husband,” his spouse, Landra, mentioned in an announcement launched to US media, including he died “peacefully this afternoon, surrounded by our household.”
Reid, who used his expertise in Congress to assist Obama steer his landmark Reasonably priced Care Act by means of the Senate, had been identified with pancreatic most cancers in 2018.
Laconic and soft-spoken, Reid was born and raised within the mining city of Searchlight, Nevada on December 2, 1939, in a home with no scorching water or indoor bathrooms.
A prize-fighter in his youth, he used his pugilistic instincts to work his method as much as changing into one of many longest-serving majority leaders in US Senate historical past, and even known as his memoir “The Good Battle.”
President Joe Biden, who served as Obama’s vice chairman and with Reid for twenty years within the Senate, mentioned in an announcement his former colleague was a “large of our historical past” and one of many “all-time nice Senate Majority Leaders.”
“For Harry, it wasn’t about energy for energy’s sake. It was concerning the energy to do proper for the individuals.”
Obama on Tuesday made public a letter he had written to Reid shortly earlier than his dying, through which he mentioned: “I would not have been president had it not been on your encouragement and assist, and I would not have gotten most of what I acquired achieved with out your ability and dedication.”
Present Senate majority chief Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, tweeted Reid was “one of the crucial superb people I’ve ever met.”
“He by no means forgot the place he got here from and used these boxing instincts to fearlessly battle those that had been hurting the poor & center class.”
‘Talent and dedication’
Regardless of his hardscrabble upbringing, Reid was elected to the Senate in 1986 and have become the chamber’s Democratic chief within the 2004 elections.
He served as the bulk chief from 2007 to 2015.
Reid usually referred to his working-class origins — his father was a miner, his mom a laundress, and neither father or mother graduated from highschool.
He hitchhiked 40 miles (65 kilometers) as an adolescent to attend the closest highschool, then graduated from Utah State College and put himself by means of George Washington College Legislation Faculty by working nights as a member of the US Capitol Police.
Quixotic, he as soon as filibustered the Republicans by himself for 9 hours, studying from the historical past e book he wrote about his hometown of Searchlight.
Reid was extra conservative than most different Democrats within the Senate.
A working towards Mormon, he was staunchly towards abortion rights — a stance that typically discovered him working at cross functions with others in his Democratic caucus.
Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi known as Reid a “titan,” describing him as “a pacesetter of immense braveness and ferocious conviction who labored tirelessly to realize historic progress for the American individuals.”
Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority chief within the Senate, mentioned Reid’s rise from poverty to political energy was a “quintessentially American story, and it took Harry’s legendary toughness, bluntness and tenacity to make it occur.”
Reid had remained outspoken and blunt even in retirement.
He slammed McConnell in 2020 for ramming by means of then-president Donald Trump’s Supreme Courtroom nominee Amy Coney-Barrett simply two months earlier than the election, after having refused to permit a vote on an Obama nominee 9 months earlier than the 2016 election.
“He and the chairman of the judiciary committee — it is simply horrible what they’ve achieved… They’re such hypocrites,” Reid mentioned of McConnell on the time.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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