As McCarran did, Reid understands the need to win federal help while keeping the government out of Nevada's business. And, as McCarran did, he has involved himself in state and local politics, anointing and blocking candidates, with limited success. Reid has said he plans to avoid future kingmaking. McCarran understood the need to take care of the home folks, but not that sometimes they need to be left alone. Reid has learned both lessons.

Reid survived scrutiny from a Los Angeles Times article that purported to show that he voted for gaming and mining interests because his sons worked for a law firm that represented those industries. That's true of every other successful Nevada politician. Reid understands the same about his colleagues because he understands his state's past.

To know Harry Reid, you need to know the U.S. Senate. Recent reports have mentioned that Reid isn't the greatest public speaker, but even his counterparts across the aisle like and respect him. That he epitomizes the Senate's best traditions helps explain Reid's success.

When McCarran's political protégé, Alan Bible, arrived in the Senate, Carl Hayden, a longtime senator from Arizona, told him there are two kinds of senators: a workhorse who does the job and a show horse who gets the attention. Bible was a workhorse, and it paid off. He gained seniority on the Appropriations and Interior committees and continued McCarran's tradition of delivering for his state, obtaining federal funding for water projects that contributed enormously to Nevada's growth.

Bible served with two Senate Democratic leaders. One, Lyndon Johnson, whom Bible worshipped, used everything from cajolery to blackmail to keep his caucus in line, and did it brilliantly -- especially with fellow presidential hopefuls like John Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Stuart Symington and Eugene McCarthy. Johnson's successor in that post, Montana's Mike Mansfield, was quiet and largely stayed behind the scenes.

Since entering the Senate, Reid has worked with several Democratic leaders, and he knows how to operate in the institution. In 1995, when Republicans sought a balanced-budget amendment, Reid dreamed up the rider that gave Democrats the ability to defeat it: making Social Security off-limits to budget cutters. As minority leader Reid is unlikely to emulate other Democratic senators who have run for the presidency or are thinking about it, and who are better known and better speakers. Reid's models are more likely to resemble Bible and Mansfield -- quiet, effective partisans who won respect and affection from all, even when they were being tough. Reid will be on the talk shows, but so will party stars like John Kerry, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and war horses like Patrick Leahy and Carl Levin. Chances are Reid will have a hand in figuring out where they should go and what they should say.

To know Harry Reid, you need to know the Mormon Church. Reid's family wasn't religious, but while he was in college, Reid and his wife (who was raised Jewish) joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then, as now, the Mormon Church is a power in Nevada politics; the church's conservatism is no secret.

That has sometimes vexed Reid. Although he is anti-choice on abortion, he abides by his party's position and has often has stated that he doesn't believe he has the right to legislate his personal views. He wasn't the only Democrat to vote for the ban on "partial birth" abortions, but he was among the few who voted to keep the law banning overseas military facilities from performing abortions. Yet he also joined 57 other senators, including four fellow Mormons, in urging Bush to expand embryonic stem-cell research -- a matter on which the Mormon Church has yet to take an official position.

Reid has reason to be cautious on choice. In 1990, a statewide ballot question asked Nevadans their opinion about choice, which they supported by a 63-37 margin. But the state's population has nearly doubled since then, and a significant percentage of the new arrivals are seniors, who tend to be social conservatives. The vote would probably be closer today.

Being Mormon has also undeniably helped Reid as well. In 1998, he faced what his onetime Senate colleague from Nevada, Richard Bryan, called "a near-death experience." In seeking his third term, Reid ran against John Ensign, who had just spent two terms in the House. (Two years later Ensign succeeded Bryan upon the latter's retirement from the Senate.)

Ensign almost succeeded Reid, who beat him by 428 votes. Reid's campaign apparently didn't awaken Nevadans to his strength as a veteran senator positioned to help his state. (South Dakotans didn't get that, either.) He certainly benefited when some Mormons normally inclined to vote for a conservative Republican like Ensign stayed with Reid. Today, Reid and Ensign have a close working relationship, despite their party differences.

Reid's membership in a conservative church could be critical to his performance as minority leader. Just as he has tried to balance the sometimes conflicting needs of rural and urban Nevada, so he will try to find a way to balance the agendas of politics and religion. And who better to deflect the inevitable Republican attacks on Democratic values than a soft-spoken follower of a church that opposes the consumption of alcohol and tobacco -- and works so closely with his Christian Republican colleagues?

Mormonism also played a factor in Reid's education. He went to Southern Utah State College (now Southern Utah University), then majored in history and political science at Utah State. There he studied with Leonard Arrington, who spent a decade as the Mormon Church's historian, trying to balance the church's demands and the scholarly record. Arrington wrote that "a follower like me, trying to do a job under conflicting instructions or pressures, was like a mouse crossing the floor where elephants are dancing."

Today, the elephants are dancing in the Senate -- and in the House, the Supreme Court, most statehouses and the White House. Democrats received plenty of votes in the 2004 election, but the party needs to rebuild. Although Reid is not in the party symbolized by the elephant, he resembles a real elephant in his long memory, including knowledge of his state and his institution.

Grant Sawyer, a liberal two-term governor of Nevada, longtime Democratic national committeeman and sometime Reid opponent in local party disputes, was asked about Reid after he finished his first Senate term. Sawyer said then, "It would be a big mistake to underestimate Harry Reid." That statement remains true today.

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