(RepublicanInformer.com)- Former Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid died last week at the age of 82 following a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer.
In a statement released after his death, Reid’s wife Landra said he passed away “peacefully” and was surrounded by friends. She expressed her gratitude for the doctors and nurses who cared for him over the last few years as he battled cancer.
Reid was Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress, spending 34 years in Washington. He left the Senate at the end of 2015 after an accident left him blind in one eye. And in 2018, Reid disclosed that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was receiving treatment.
Just two weeks before his death, Nevada officials and his son Rory Reid marked the renaming of the Las Vegas airport as Harry Reid International Airport. Neither Reid nor his wife attended the December 14 ceremony. The airport was previously named after former Senator from Nevada Pat McCarran.
Reid’s career, defined by his brusque style and penchant for conniving dishonesty, was not without controversy.
In 2006, Senator Reid faced accusations that he hid a seven-figure deal with a friend connected to the mob. In 2015, a Utah state prosecutor pursuing a corruption case against a former Utah attorney general uncovered evidence of Reid’s involvement. Reid however, denied any wrongdoing. That same year, Reid abruptly announced his resignation from the Senate.
Reid wasn’t beneath using his Congressional immunity to slander and defame people with impunity from the Senate floor. Most notably, in 2012, Senator Reid, during a Senate floor speech, accused 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney of failing to pay his taxes.
It was a lie.
And when Reid was later challenged on using the Senator floor to utter such a flagrant lie, his only response was to say it worked, Romney lost the election.
Reid’s longtime Republican colleague Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley expressed his condolences on Twitter, saying that while he is “ideologically opposite” Reid, he believes Reid did a good job representing the interests of Nevada in the Senate. Reid, Grassley added, “ran a tight ship.”
