Harry Reid, a pugnacious Senate majority leader with deep Jewish ties, dies at 82

January 7, 2022

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Then-Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid speaks during an address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C., May 23, 2011.

WASHINGTON (JTA) - When Harry Reid was 19, he wanted to marry Landra Gould. Her Jewish parents had other ideas.

Reid, a middleweight boxer who converted to the Church of Latter-day Saints as a college student, got into a fistfight with Gould's father in her front yard. And then he and Landra eloped.

Reid's pugilistic sensibility served him well in politics, lifting him up from abject poverty in Nevada on to Congress, where he became the Democratic Party's Senate majority leader. He helped Democrats score multiple major legislation victories, including President Barack Obama's signature Affo...

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