The Magazine

Permanent Minority Leader?

Harry Reid takes over from Tom Daschle.

Nov 29, 2004, Vol. 10, No. 11 • By MATTHEW CONTINETTI
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SEARCHLIGHT, NEVADA, is a timeworn desert town of under 600 people about an hour south of Las Vegas. Its heyday was long ago, when the promise of gold attracted hard-rock miners to the area's brown and red hills. But what gold there was is now gone, and with it the miners, gamblers, prostitutes, and other frontier rogues. Today the town is desolate. The rusty hills sigh resignedly under the weight of mobile homes. Its time, one would think, has passed.

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. 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. His childhood home had no indoor plumbing; his elementary and middle school had two rooms; and his high school education was dependent on whether he could hitchhike each week to school in Henderson, 44 miles north of Searchlight.

These profiles did not escape the senator's attention. "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. 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.

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