Leader Reid
by Vincent Fiore

What do we know about Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.)?

We know he is outspoken, hard-hitting and myopically partisan as a U.S. Senator and minority party leader. But Mr. Reid has developed an entire career outside his Senate duties in Washington. Indeed, Senator Reid is turning out to be the Donald Trump of the Senate, acquiring and selling land for substantial profit.

Reid’s outside-the-Senate moonlighting was first bought to light on June 22, 2003, by a two-part article run by the Los Angeles Times. The article is lengthy and detailed, but here are the money lines:

“At least 17 senators and 11 members of the House have children, spouses or other close relatives who lobby or work as consultants, most in Washington, according to lobbyist reports, financial-disclosure forms and other state and federal records. Many are paid by clients who count on the related lawmaker for support.

“But Harry Reid is in a class by himself. One of his sons and his son-in-law lobby in Washington for companies, trade groups and municipalities seeking Reid's help in the Senate. A second son has lobbied in Nevada for some of those same interests, and a third has represented a couple of them as a litigator.

“In the last four years alone, their firms have collected more than $2 million in lobbying fees from special interests that were represented by the kids and helped by the senator in Washington.

“So pervasive are the ties among Reid, members of his family and Nevada's leading industries and institutions that it's difficult to find a significant field in which such a relationship does not exist.”

More recently, Reid was exposed for collecting a 1.1 million dollar windfall profit on “a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years.” Senator Reid did not bother to inform the Senate of the sale, engineered by a longtime Reid family friend, Jay Brown, a “former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He's never been charged with wrongdoing - except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.”

What this all adds up to is one overly industrious senator who spends an enormous amount of time using his political clout in Washington to enrich himself, and his immediate family members. Harry Reid’s son, Rory, is in fact the Clark County commissioner in Nevada. One wonders how helpful this has been when smoothing over zoning matters on federally protected or questionable parcels of land. In fact, the entire Reid family participates and benefits handsomely from papa Reid’s big chair in Washington.

Reid has been involved in well over a dozen transactions from Nevada to Virginia, as a seller and a buyer. The website, “The Strata-Sphere,” brilliantly illustrates the buying and selling of these properties.

Will these activities be investigated like former Congressman Mark Foley’s activities? Will the traditional media demand that all of the facts come out? In the end, the possibly dirty deeds of Democratic Senator Harry Reid will probably not go much further than those of us within the new media. Somehow, the mainstream media allows liberal lawmakers like Harry Reid to receive a pass--a kind of beltway “get out of jail free” card.

We shall see.

Vincent Fiore is a freelance political writer who lives in New York City. His work can be seen throughout the Internet, including the American Conservative Union Foundation, GOPUSA, Human Events, and theconservativevoice. Vincent is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance and a contributing writer for NewsBusters.org.