Harry Reid Makes His Mark With Health Care Bill

What's driving Harry? Conscience, polls, legacy, religion? All of the above.

In what seems destined to become the most historic act in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's political career, the Nevada senator boldly announced this week that the bill he negotiated with the White House and the chairmen of the two committees debating the health care plan would include a public option for Americans who do not receive health insurance from their employers. At a press conference on Monday, Reid explained that the government-run health insurance option would contain a provision that allows states to decline participation. Reid's decision will "be pivotal in the history of health care reform, define his legacy as Senate leader and shape his chances for re-election in 2010," as Las Vegas Sun reporter Lisa Mascaro put it. Whether or not the bill survives the Senate, it is a win-win situation for Reid, President Obama, and Senate Democrats.

Immediately following his announcement, Reid's motives were scrutinized. Praised from the Left and attacked from the Right, in one fell swoop Reid ascended from the caricatured weak obfuscator to a Senate leader reminiscent of some of his towering predecessors. While he has always been an enigma to national political observers, those who know him best -- his Nevada supporters and detractors alike -- believe he is following his conscience, adhering to his religious beliefs, thinking of his legacy, and, in keeping with his signature pragmatism, listening to the polls.

It's a complicated political environment for Reid. While he is the most powerful political figure Nevada has ever produced, polls in Nevada have shown him trailing in his 2010 re-election bid.

Although Nevada's favorite son has a $25-million war chest, recent polls show Reid being clobbered by his Republican challengers. Liberals and conservatives attack him with equal passion. His "critics run the gamut from right-wing ideologues such as Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh . . . to left wingers who think he's too cautious in pursuing the Democratic agenda," according to the Las Vegas alternative weekly, City Life. While Reid addressed a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce luncheon in August, more than 100 protesters carried signs that read: "Too Liberal for Nevada" and "Anyone But Harry." At the same time, Nevada progressives were accusing Reid of vacillating on the public option health insurance plan.

Meanwhile, his son, Rory, is the Democratic favorite in the Nevada governor's race, but faces an uphill battle against Brian Sandoval. The charismatic Republican opponent gave up a $174,000 per-year lifetime appointment as a federal judge to run against Reid, Jr. Ironically, it was Sen. Reid who had recommended Sandoval to then-president George W. Bush for the appointment to Nevada's U.S. District Court. Conventional wisdom suggests that the famously independent Nevadans naturally balk at a dynasty and are not prepared to elect two Reids in next year's election.

Meanwhile, as the highest-ranking elected Mormon in the history of the church, Reid's liberal stance in the health care debate puts him at odds with the overwhelmingly conservative Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Of 14 Mormon members in Congress, only four are Democrats.) But Reid has managed to maintain the support of his Mormon constituency, which makes up 7.5 percent of the Nevada population.

Reid is an introspective man, keenly aware of his unlikely rise from the remote southern Nevada "flyspeck" town of Searchlight to majority leader of the U.S. Senate. "My path to the present was as circuitous and turbulent and unique as it was unlikely," he wrote in his 2008 autobiography, "The Good Fight." Still, he is, above all, a consummate politician. Not to take anything away from Reid's thoughtfulness, but he must have been emboldened by the recent poll by Research 2000 that showed that 54 percent of Nevadans favored a public option, and that a whopping 63 percent of Las Vegans favored it. "Nevadans are as worried as anybody about rising health care costs," wrote Geoff Schumacher in the ultra-conservative Las Vegas Review Journal. "Reid should take these poll results and run with them. Nationally and locally, a majority of Americans want bold action on health care, not wimpy, muddled incrementalism."