Land of Hard Knocks

Reid remembers struggling as a young father during his law school days. He couldn't pay his bills despite working six days a week. Desperate, he sought advice from a GWU dean, who looked Reid in the eye and said, "Why don't you just drop out of law school?"

"I decided that I would wash my hands of that school right then," Reid says. He harbored this ill will for more than 40 years. (He eventually reconciled with the school and spoke at the law school's graduation in May.)

"Harry never forgets," Daschle says when asked what it's like to cross Reid. "He forgives over time, but he never forgets."

Reid's strength is the transactional aspect of politics. He is expert at securing commitments, amassing chits, closing gaps. "There are some brilliant people in the Senate who would score 220 on an IQ test but couldn't get two people with the same philosophy to agree on anything," says Bryan.

Reid was a frequent emissary between senators who weren't on speaking terms, such as perennially feuding New Jersey Democrats Robert Torricelli and Frank Lautenberg. Reid is a fervid partisan, but still relatively popular among Republican senators.

Reid was instrumental in convincing then-Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords to leave the GOP, temporarily putting the Democrats in the majority in 2001. Reid even relinquished a claim on the chairmanship of the Senate Public Works Committee to Jeffords. "A lot of Democrats got chairmanships because Reid gave up his own," political analyst Ralston says.

All of this proved useful on election night 2004. When it was clear Daschle would lose, Reid considered running to succeed him. He slept on it for three hours, woke and decided to run. Still in his hotel slippers, Reid called down his caucus list. By 11 a.m., Reid says, he had secured the support of every member he talked to, except for two.

Despite his repeated claim that he "never planned on" running for leader before election night, Reid had his eye on becoming leader for many years. When Daschle was thinking about a 2004 presidential campaign, Reid campaigned to be his successor. "He made quite a point of talking to people then, locking up votes," Daschle says, which Reid confirms. Bryan recalls that Reid supported Daschle's campaign to become leader in 1994 with an eye to moving up the leadership ranks.

But the "never planned this" conceit comports much better with the "aw-shucks Harry" persona, and Reid has thus fostered an image of a kind of accidental leader who wandered up his career path rather than mapping it out. Another aspect of this is that Reid plays up the thanklessness of his job. Reid quotes a line from former Democratic leader George Mitchell. "This is the best job in the world," Reid says. "When we're out of session."

Reid, in fact, loves his job, the power it grants, the accouterments -- the big office, the security detail, the access, the White House meetings.

"Someone once told me that you can get anyone to return your calls when you're a senator," Reid says. "And it's true. It's amazing." During one interview in his office, Reid takes a call from actor Tony Curtis, who will be hosting a group of Reid's top donors at his home in Las Vegas. Upon hanging up, Reid marvels at how nice a man Curtis is.

"It's amazing that I get to do this stuff," he says.

In a Small Town

Reid says he often wonders why he keeps going back to Searchlight.

"Why would anyone want to be in Searchlight?" he asks, referring to the days of his boyhood. "There was nothing there. There were no jobs, nothing." When he was writing his book on the town, Reid says he struggled with how to conclude it. "I came to the realization that when I grew up in Searchlight, it was really a town of people who really weren't very successful," Reid says.

He wanted to be more optimistic in the book. He didn't want to offend anyone. So he buffed up the ending, made the book a triumph of civic endurance rather than despair.

As he says this, Reid is walking into the Searchlight Nugget casino for lunch. He sits down, orders vegetable beef soup and complains about the cigarette smoke. He holds court, greets people, gives you the lowdown on everyone.

"This guy got shot in the ass in World War II," Reid says, motioning to an old local character, Junior Cree, who is limping over to the senator's table.

"So," Junior says, squinting down at Pinky Reid, "I hear you're a pretty big deal back there in Washington."