Eight years later: Harry Reid’s highs and lows as Senate majority leader

By Amber Phillips

Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2014 | 2 a.m.

To understand the pinnacle of Sen. Harry Reid's career, let's go back nine years, to Election Day 2006.

Senate Democrats were on the verge of taking control of the Senate for the first time since 2001. Reid, their leader, watched election results anxiously with close aides and fellow senators from a suite in the Capitol Hill Hyatt. When one of their most endangered candidates, Claire McCaskill, won a hard-fought race in Missouri, Reid jumped off his chair and kissed the TV screen.

"I never thought we could do it," he told the New York Times when the party cinched the majority.

Nevada's senior senator would go on to serve for eight years as Senate majority leader. In that role, he decided which bills went to the floor and when, controlled a sometimes fractious party and played a key part in high-level negotiations with two presidents, guiding our nation's policy on everything from national debt to immigration. All while keeping a watchful eye on his home state.

But now Reid must step aside. After a disastrous midterm election for Democrats, Reid will hand over control of the Senate to Republicans when Congress comes back in January.

Here's a look at the highs and lows of Sen. Reid's eight-year career leading the Senate:

2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014

2007

Highs

With Senate Democrats finally in control, Reid set out to cut a deal with the man he had called a "loser and liar;" President George W. Bush. The two worked with a bipartisan group of senators to craft immigration reform legislation. Getting such a bill signed into law would evade Reid his entire time as majority leader; this particular bill died quickly in the Senate. But nonetheless, crafting legislation with his adversary marked a high point in Reid's first term as majority leader.

Lows

Even before their immigration deal failed to advance in the Senate, Reid's relationship with Bush continued to deteriorate. A low point: Reid announcing "The war is lost" in an April press conference about the Iraq War.

2008

Highs

November 2008 was a great time for Democrats, who won the presidency, kept the Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representatives. A shifting red-to-blue Nevada played a key part in it all: President Barack Obama won the state, thanks to Reid's ever-strengthening get-out-the-vote machine. (Obama would later give Reid a signed iconic photo captioned "To Harry … the change you helped make happen.") Even sweeter, Reid now had a promise from the man he helped elect that Nevada's Yucca Mountain would never become the nation's nuclear waste site while Obama was in office.

Lows

September 2008; the month the Great Recession hit America. The country's economy was in a freefall, and no city fell further than Las Vegas. Once on the top of every economic list in the nation — from job creation, to employment, to housing prices — the city plummeted to the last. Reid played damage control on two fronts. While attempting to shove through Congress controversial legislation to bail out big banks, he was also part of boardroom-level negotiations back home to save CityCenter, the $9.2 billion MGM Resorts development project that threatened to implode and take Las Vegas down with it.

2009

Highs

Reid's high point this year came early on, when he helped maneuver a 1,100-page economic stimulus bill through Congress in less than a month. Reid used the legislation to direct money to Nevada's nascent renewable energy industry. Today, the stimulus package is often cited by Reid and energy advocates as the cornerstone of renewable policy in Nevada — and a major reason electric car maker Tesla eventually chose the state for a battery factory. Another highlight this year was Reid's coup of luring Republican Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democrats, helping Senate Democrats reach a historic 60-proof filibuster majority. And let's not forget Reid played a major role shepherding through Congress the president's health care reform law, known as Obamacare.

Lows

With that 60-proof majority, Democrats pushed sweeping and historic changes to America's health care and financial system. But it came at a cost. The 111th Congress was the most productive Congress in recent memory, but congressional scholars also note it as one of the most dysfunctional. Democrats would be paying at the polls for the rest of Obama's presidency, they predicted. Sure enough, the next election cycle saw the rise of the modern Tea Party. This year, Reid also lost his dear liberal friend in the Senate, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, who died in April of brain cancer.

2010

Highs:

The morning of the 2010 elections, nearly everyone but his own pollster predicted Reid would lose his fifth term to the Senate by at least 2 percentage points. Reid won re-election by more than 5 points, in what supporters and opponents would later say was one of the most flawless campaigns ever executed. Back in Washington, Reid found behind-the-scenes success when he persuaded Sen. Robert Byrd to vote for a successful repeal of the military's ban on openly gay members, known as Don't Ask Don't Tell. This was also the first year Reid passed the Travel Promotion Act, which boosted international tourism in Las Vegas.

Lows

But the year started out rough when, in January, Reid was forced to apologize after the Washington insider book "Game Change" reported Reid predicted Obama could win in 2008 because of his "light-skinned appearance," and "No Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Reid's mud-slinging, hard-fought campaign rated among the toughest periods of his career, too — and Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives to the Tea Party wave, making Reid's life even more difficult. But probably one of the worst days of the senator's life was March 11, 2010, when his wife and daughter were slammed by a tractor-trailer on a Virginia highway and seriously injured. His wife, Landra Reid, broke her nose, back and neck.

2011

Highs

This incredibly tough and hyperpartisan year for Reid, highs were hard to come by. He did have some success on the home front, though: At his annual Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Reid announced the first-ever hybrid geothermal and solar plant, combining two of Nevada's home grown forms of renewable energy. (This year, Nevada ranked second in the nation for solar and geothermal energy, by some estimates.) Reid also got a law through Congress expanding who in Nevada can access electricity made by the Hoover Dam.

Lows

This year marked the ascendance of Rep. John Boehner, of Ohio, to the speakership. Reid and Boehner's first major throwdown happened that summer, when Republicans refused to raise the debt ceiling unless Obama and Reid agreed to equal amounts of spending cuts. (And thus, across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration was born.) Reid reportedly threw his head between his knees, as if he were going to vomit, when all sides agreed to move forward with sequestration. Also, Nevada's junior senator, Republican John Ensign, resigned amid a sex and hush-money scandal. Reid and Ensign had a famously good working relationship.

2012

Highs

Once again, Obama won the presidency, and once again, he carried Nevada. Plus, as was the case in 2008, Reid's impressive voter registration and get-out-the-vote apparatus could take much of the credit for that. In addition, Senate Democrats defied predictions and actually increased their majority by two seats. Earlier that year, Reid encouraged Obama behind the scenes to take executive action halting deportations of millions of young immigrants in the country illegally. Obama announced the program in June.

Lows

Reid's aides remember the winter of 2012 as "the winter of discontent." Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, fought over filibusters and the debt limit "like scorpions trapped in a jar," according to a Bloomberg editorial. And despite Reid's best efforts, Nevada's newest senator would be a Republican, Dean Heller. Finally, Reid's wife, Landra, was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer. (She's in remission now.)

2013

Highs

June 2013 marked one of the legislative highlights of Reid's career. The Senate passed an immigration reform bill — a goal of Reid's since he became majority leader in 2007. "Our nation desperately needs this commonsense reform," he said at the time.

Lows

But things went downhill for Reid after that. The bill has since stalled in the Republican-controlled of House of Representatives. And Reid struggled internally, and with his caucus, on a momentous decision he finally pulled the trigger on: The "nuclear option," which changed Senate rules to require just a simple majority to approve most presidential nominations. On top of that, the government shut down for 16 days in October.

2014

Highs

As Nevada's economy slowly but surely improved from the 2008 recession, Reid worked with Nevada's Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval to bring a lithium ion battery factory for Tesla to Northern Nevada. It cost the state $1.3 billion in tax breaks, but Reid said it was pinnacle of years of him laying groundwork in Congress for Nevada's renewable energy economy. Just a few weeks ago, Reid also pushed eight stalled Nevada lands bills through Congress — one of the largest lands deals for the state since 2009. Finally, Reid used the "nuclear option" to expertly maneuver around a Republican misstep during the lame duck session and appoint dozens of Obama's federal judges, a move that could outlast both men for decades.

Lows

Reid's reign as majority leader came to an end when Republicans took over the Senate — and swept the state of Nevada — in spectacular fashion. Newly marginalized Senate Democrats elected Reid their leader for the next Congress, but not without some dissension. Reid, who turned 75 this year and is expected to run for his sixth term in 2016, boldly predicted he'd be back in the leader's chair soon.

"It’s not as if I haven’t had a real challenge over the years," he said.