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In this interview, Harry Reid describes the poverty of his family when he was growing up in a small Nevada town, his introduction to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, how he became involved in politics, and how he dealt with the criticism from some other Latter-day Saints about his political positions. This interview was conducted on March 26, 2021, by Richard Davis, BYU professor emeritus of political science. Harry Reid passed away on December 28, 2021.

Richard Davis: Senator Reid, thank you very much again for coming and participating. If we could start with a little bit of background, could you talk about your growing up years and particularly where you grew up and also how you became interested in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Harry Reid: I was born in a place called Searchlight, Nevada. Searchlight is on the southern tip of the state of Nevada, about sixty miles from Las Vegas, and I grew up there during the Second World War. Mining had long since gone away, and the number one business when I grew up in Searchlight was prostitution. We had many brothels, as many as twelve or thirteen at one time, and so that was the business of Searchlight.

There were a number of military installations within an hour or so from Searchlight, and on payday Searchlight was very busy. People would come from bases down in California and Indian Springs and Nellis—all over; the military would come. So that’s where I grew up. We referred to the women who were prostitutes as the girls. That’s not politically correct now, but that’s what we called them. And we went to a school where one teacher taught all eight grades. And I guess the most important thing is that I finished in the top third of my class. We only had, you know, nine kids graduate!

My dad was a hard-rock miner, but during those years, as I indicated, there wasn’t much going on in mining, and so he still did mining. But a lot of times he worked for people that didn’t pay him and checks bounced. My mother took in wash.

And one may ask, “Well, whose wash was she doing down in a town with a couple hundred people?” She took in wash for the dealers and the other people who worked in the casinos and brothels. So that’s what she did.

We lived in a house that had no hot water, no inside toilet, and that’s how I grew up. At the time I didn’t realize that we were poor, and I probably didn’t have all the accoutrements of a lot of other kids my age, but at the time I didn’t know. I felt pretty good about things; I didn’t feel sorry for myself.

Now, when it came time to go to school, there was no high school in Searchlight, so what I would do is I would board with people. The first school year I boarded with my aunt and uncle. And I would come back to Searchlight sometimes—catch a bus or hitchhike. And so it was during my high school career.

I loved high school. I’ve been involved in scores of elections over my career, but the most important election that I ever was in was when I was elected junior class treasurer. Now, that may not sound like much to people, but for me it was an acknowledgment that my peers had accepted me. And I came over from Searchlight to go to school, and basically, you know, my clothes were ordered out of catalog. My clothes were different than the rest of kids. I’m sure my hair was different. I found that people were nice to me, and especially the Mormon kids, who were really outstanding in school.

Bernard Cannon, who was a great athlete—he was very nice to me. Ron McCallister—they were all very nice to me. Then I got sick. They called it rheumatic fever. I don’t know what it was, but I had some kind of infection, and it was before they did penicillin, I guess. And I was sick, and three girls came to visit me. And they said they want me to run for student body president. And I said, “Look. Russell Williams has been freshman class president, sophomore class president, junior class president, and he is a better athlete. And everyone knows he’s really smart.” They said he was a genius. I said, “I doubt if I can beat him,” and they said, “Oh, we think we can.” So anyway I ran for student body president and was elected, and that was a wonderful time in my young life.

We started the Clark County Student Body Association, so I got to know other kids from around Clark County. I went to Boys State, and that was also a wonderful experience. I’d never traveled any place to speak of, but we went to Reno, and that’s where Boys State was, and it was a really a wonderful experience for me to get to know some of the other student leaders from around the state of Nevada.

And when it came time for me to go to college, I had been an athlete in high school. I played football and baseball. But as I look back, I wasn’t really a good athlete, although I got an athletic scholarship to go to what at that time was called a junior college. They now call it a community college. I went to a community college in Cedar City, Utah.

I was only seventeen when I started college. The other guys on the football team had beards, had been away two years on missions. They were much older than I. My football career didn’t last long. I wasn’t big enough, fast enough, or good enough to be the athlete of my dreams. And so I really felt bad about that because that was what I always wanted to do, to be an athlete.

So I can remember being in my dorm, and they were gone to the football game, and I was sitting on my bed feeling sorry for myself. I can hear the music playing before the game and I thought to myself, “What am I going to do?” I got injured, so I couldn’t play football, and besides, as I indicated, I came to a conclusion pretty quickly that I wasn’t good enough, fast enough, or big enough. So what could I do? And then I thought to myself, you know, I’ve never tried to do well in school, and I’ve been to classes now a few weeks and they didn’t seem that hard to me. I’ll try to make good grades. So that’s what I did. I decided I was going to make good grades, and I made really good grades.

And so it’s a two-year school, and my grades were good enough that I got a scholarship to go to Utah State University. And that was the beginning of my academic career, which I found very, very fun. I married between my junior and senior year of college. My wife and I, we decided we had to elope. My wife’s Jewish, and her parents were nice to me until they realized that the situation was getting out of hand with our love affair, and so we had some real difficult problems with her parents. We got into a fistfight with her dad, and so we decided to elope. And so between my sophomore and junior year in college, we got married and went up to Logan.

And it was a wonderful, unique experience. My wife was Jewish and I was nothing. Searchlight had lots of brothels but no churches, so I’d never been to a church. In my home in Searchlight, the closest thing we had to religion in the Reid family was my mother had hung on the wall a pillowcase with no pillow in it. It was oil blue with yellow fringe, and on it, it said, “We can. We will. We must. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” That was our religion. And so when I arrived up in Logan, the house—student housing—was just awful. Landra wouldn’t live that way. So we went to the newspaper, a daily newspaper, and they had an ad in the newspaper that was going to be printed the next day of an apartment. And they said, “Here it is. Take a look at it, and if you want to call the number you can.”

So we called, and the person that we talked to, his name was Matthew Bird. He was an old man, probably in his seventies, who said, “Are you members of the church?” We said, “No,” and he asked us a lot of questions. He had a basement apartment he rented, and so he agreed to rent it to us. So we lived in his basement apartment.

I did very well in school, both in Cedar City and Utah State. I got a full ride scholarship to go to Israel to study. They paid for your schooling, but not to take the trip over there. I didn’t have the money, so I figured maybe I’d do something else. During that time Nevada did not have a law school. It was suggested by many that I should try to get a job in Washington, DC where I could work and go to school at the same time.

And my mentor then, the only mentor I really had my entire career, was a man by the name of Michael O’Callaghan. Michael O’Callaghan was my high school government teacher, and he was just such a great teacher! He was a Korean War veteran who lost one of his legs.

Everybody loved the man, and I asked him for any ideas as to how I could go to school in Washington, get a job. And I had written a letter to Congressman Walter Baring, who served twenty-two years in Congress—real right wing, very conservative guy, Jeffersonian Democrat, and he sent me a letter back saying he had no spot for me. O’Callaghan—I was with him in his home—picked up the phone and said, “Listen. He’s my prize student. You didn’t have the courtesy of spelling his name right. You spell it R-E-I-D.” He said, “I’m chairman of the state Democratic Party, and you get him a job, or I will make sure you lose your next election.”

So I got a job. I was a Capitol Police officer, and I went to law school full time. As a policeman I worked the 3–11 shift, and it was a long, hard struggle, but I went and graduated in a little over two years out of law school. And the bar was only given once a year in Nevada, so I petitioned the Supreme Court to let me take the bar before I graduated from law school, which is kind of unheard of. But I petitioned the court, and they said, “I guess if you must try, let him try it.” So I passed the bar before I graduated from law school. And that’s how I returned back to Nevada.

I was city attorney first, which was an appointed job, and people there decided that there was corruption in that large county hospital called Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital, and they said, “What we want you to do is to run against the people that are on the hospital board.” Well, how that worked is they elected four in the primary and two in the general election. Well, I came in third in the primary, and the two incumbents were Bill Pursel, an insurance salesman, and an orthopedic surgeon by the name of Dr. Madson.

And after the primary I came in third, but I got a call from the guy that came in fourth, and his name was Murry Kaysha. He said, “I can’t beat these people.” But he said, “You can. I will help you get some finances, and you can run against these guys and beat them.”

Sure enough, he produced money for me. They were called the Jewish Mafia. They were all Jews; most of them ran pawn shops. They raised money for me, and I was able to get elected to the assembly because of their help.

When I went to the assembly, if you can imagine how gullible I was, they [the pawnbrokers] hadn’t had a raise with their interest rates in fifteen or twenty years and they said, “Would you be good enough to introduce legislation to give us a raise?” Now, that’s a dumb thing to do. I’m going there and trying to help pawnbrokers. But I did it and I got it passed. I gave them a raise, so during my entire career they were my people. They were always on my side; they always helped me financially, and that was the beginning of my political career. Elected to the assembly; served there one term. I went out to get ready to run for reelection for my assembly spot to Circus Circus, where they had a publicist and where somebody was a friend of mine, and during the meeting they said, “Why don’t you run for lieutenant governor?”

I said, “Lieutenant governor—I never thought of that. OK, I’ll run for lieutenant governor,” right there on the spot, but no preparation at all. They typed up a press release, and it came out I was running for lieutenant governor. So I went home and said, “Landra, I’m running for lieutenant governor.”

Well, there was a columnist for the Las Vegas Sun newspaper by the name of Paul Pricing who wrote this column. He said, “For him to run for anything, let alone lieutenant governor, he must have had the backing of Howard Hughes; otherwise, nobody would be so dumb—too dumb to do it otherwise.” And sure enough, I wasn’t helped by Howard Hughes, but people thought I was, and to make a long story short I was elected lieutenant governor. It surprised everybody. So that’s a quick view of my political beginning.

Richard Davis: When did you first become interested in the Mormon church and why?

Harry Reid: Well, when I went to high school, as I told you, I was kind of a misfit hick from Searchlight, but I found that the Mormon boys and girls were really nice to me. Maybe they were nice to everybody, but I thought they were just nice to me, and so that was my first dealings with members of the church.

But one of my friends asked me, he said, “I go to something called seminary every morning.” He said, “You should go with me.” I was a freshman in high school. He said, “It lasts about an hour, teachers are good, and a lot of pretty girls there.” So I went to seminary with him and my first exposure to the Mormon church doctrinally was there. There was a teacher by the name of Marlon Walker who was a Spanish teacher, basic high school, but he was also a Mormon bishop, and he taught seminary. He was just a stunningly good teacher. That year that I went it was on church history. So it gave me my first exposure to the Mormon church, because, as I indicated, in Searchlight we had no religion other than for President Roosevelt. So I was really impressed by him [Marlon Walker] and my Mormon friends. And he did things then that you really couldn’t do anymore because we all have to be socially correct, or politically correct, and he would take Landra and me separately to his office and teach us what the church was all about. He did that on his own. You know, you couldn’t take kids out of school or do that anymore; it wouldn’t work. But he did, and we got really interested.

So when we went to Logan, Utah State, Landra worked. In those days, you know, women got the short end of almost everything, and even though she was a better student than I clearly, she worked, and I went to school. And she worked at Thiokol Chemical Company out by Brigham City someplace. She took the bus out there every day, to and from work, and I would stay and study.

And she came home one night, and she said the bus driver was a stake missionary and he wanted to know if you and me would agree to allow him to come with someone else and teach us a little bit about the Mormon church. I said, “No problem; that’s fine.” They came. It was the lessons for months. They don’t spend that much time with you anymore; it’s rather a quick deal. But they spent a lot of time with us, and that’s where we joined the church.

Richard Davis: Do you think the church had anything to do with how you approached your public service?

Harry Reid: Well, I’ve always been very careful not wearing my religion on my sleeve. You can’t separate your religious beliefs from what you do in everyday life. So I don’t think the church had directly anything to do with my running for public office. That was more a result of my immersion in politics of Washington, DC.

I was interested and would go to political gatherings there in Nevada society, and I was a policeman, and I can remember once when Everett Dirksen was the Republican leader of the Senate. He did an interview in an area where the Ohio Clock is, and it was memorable. He was there explaining what a tough time America was in because the Soviet Union had just set off a hydrogen bomb. So I was exposed to politics in Washington, DC, big time, because I would have to—a part of my duties of the security for events like that. And also we lived outside Washington, DC, in Alexandria or Arlington, Virginia, one of the two places. We had lived in both of them for short periods of time. We changed our apartments.

During that time, the members of the church in our ward out there were really excellent students and great examples for us because they were solid members of the church. A lot of them had been on missions, and they set a great example for us.

Richard Davis: So you’ve held various callings in the church; was that difficult to do and be in public service?

Harry Reid: I was an elders quorum president, I really don’t know how many times, at least half a dozen times—many, many different times. And the biggest issue that I, as I look back in it, that was troubling to me, was the issue related to African Americans, Blacks in the church. That was a hard thing for me to comprehend, and I can remember one of my staff who was a member of the church came in and said, “They just made an announcement in Salt Lake today that Blacks are able to hold the priesthood.” It’s hard for me to describe the elation I felt because that was a troubling thing for me.

So that was important for me, but as I look back at my church involvement, I was always hounded by members of the church that I was too liberal and all that. Now, they asked if they should hold a court on Reid to see if he should be a member of the church. They wrote letters like that. And they were very, very unhelpful to me and my political endeavors.

And it got worse rather than better because, for example, the state of Nevada passed a constitutional amendment to outlaw gay marriages. Then there was a proposed federal constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex couples from marrying. Everyone knew that I would vote yes. I voted no. I voted against the amendment, which surprised everybody. And so, I mean, I’ve done some things that upset members of the church—not purposely, but I just did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. I felt good about what I had done, and it was things like that that caused a lot of trouble with them, members of the church—how they felt about me.

I can remember once in our church parking lot they had a trunk-or-treat, where they’d have the trunk up, and it’s where they did the trick-or-treating, you know, with the trunks the cars. But one of the cars had a picture of me as the devil—me as the devil, just trying to humiliate me.

One of the stake presidents invited me for a big fireside. As I pulled into the church, it had big signs saying, “Reid’s one of the Gadianton robbers,” and all that kind of stuff. I felt that I was right and they were wrong, so it never affected my feelings about the church. It didn’t hurt my testimony at all.

Richard Davis: But leaders of the church, I think, appreciate it very much what you did. Could you talk about some of the things that you’ve done for the church?

Harry Reid: Sure. Well, we did a lot of stuff on the ability to issue visas. I remember we had a big problem with Spain. I worked very hard to get that worked out, and got it worked out so that missionaries could get their visas.

I can remember, I got a call from—my secretary said that Elder [James E.] Faust wants to talk to you. I said, “OK.” So I got on the phone. It was him with [President Gordon B.] Hinckley.

It was [Presidents] Hinckley, Faust, and who was the other one? I don’t think it was [President Thomas S.] Monson; it couldn’t have been [President] Monson in the First Presidency. Anyway, they said—all three of them on the line—they said, “We want you to go to Wyoming. There’s a place there called Martin’s Cove. And we want you to do everything you can to understand it once you go there. And you’ll meet with the stake president—a man who has jurisdiction over that part of Wyoming.” And I said, “Well, I’m really busy. I don’t know when I can go.” They said, “You’re not busy on Sundays, are you?” I said, “No.” They said, “Well, you can go on a Sunday then.”

So Landra and I flew out there on a Sunday. It was a great experience because we had someone from the Church History Department who told us all about Martin’s Cove [and that the church wanted to acquire the land], and I sure learned a lot about it. And the reason the General Authorities were interested in my going out there was because one of the senators of Wyoming [Mike Enzi] was very anti-church. Senator Mike Enzi was just a gentleman, just the nicest guy. And he said, “You just be patient.” He said, “We’ll work this out.”

So I went out and met with everybody regarding Martin’s Cove, and sure enough Enzi was right. We were able to get that, so the church got that property.

That was a big deal to get that. The church now owns all that. And Mike Enzi, I’ve never forgotten all that—how hard that was for him to do. And he did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. I just got a note from him—I sent him a big basket of cheese goodies, just to remind him how much I cared about him. I still keep in touch with him. He did that because it was the right thing to do, even though it wasn’t good for him politically.

Richard Davis: So could you talk about Larry Pressler and your role in him joining the church?

Harry Reid: Larry Pressler. He was a longtime congressman from South Dakota, became a senator from South Dakota, and we would try to beat him, and he beat us. However, we finally got up someone to run against him who beat him. Now the reason this is so interesting is that Pressler was no longer in the Senate, but the person who beat him, Tim Johnson, had a brain aneurysm, and he was really incapacitated. So I asked Larry to come to my office. I said, “Larry, I know that you lost the election. I’m sorry about that. But I would like you to go meet with Tim Johnson who is ill, and just try to buck him up a little bit. He can’t talk very well; he’s got to run for reelection, and he can’t do his ads because he can’t speak well. So if you would go do that, that would be something we call above and beyond the call of duty. Someone that has beaten you, you’re over trying to make him feel better.”

So Pressler did that. It was a wonderful thing Pressler did—one of the best things he ever did. And so that was how I got to know Larry Pressler personally, and I would have him over in the office once in a while. He was a very nice man; he was a very religious man. And one day he came over and I said, “I want to give you a Book of Mormon.”

“OK.” So he took it and read it, and several weeks later he came in and said, “Now, I have here an article that was written about a man who is a Rhodes Scholar, just like I was, who was a member of the church.” And he said, “It’s such a wonderful article. They talked about me, and I want to meet that man.”

So he brought in an article that been written about him. It was by a man named Clayton Christensen. So I introduced Pressler to Christensen. They developed a warm relationship, became extremely close, and Clayton Christensen worked with Larry Pressler about any questions that he had about the church. They would get together to talk; they became very, very good friends, and that’s the story.

Richard Davis: Thank you very much. So you’re a Democrat. How does that connect, in your mind, to the church and the gospel?

Harry Reid: Well, with my background we talked about a little bit, I couldn’t be a Republican. I think that the Democratic Party over the generations has been the party that looks out for the underclass, the poor, the working class, unions; that’s who I am. That’s who I was because that was how I was brought up. I’ve been a union guy for a long time. So Democrat is what I have been.

I believe that the Republican Party has been ambushed by Trump. I believe in a strong two-party system. It’s good—we’re the envy of the rest of the world because of our two-party system, but Trump has so hurt the Republican Party that the Republican Party has to break away from Trump. Till that happens, Republicans are not going to do well, and that’s what all the elections so far have shown. So I’m a Democrat by choice.

I can remember first coming to the Senate; how we used to work together—Democrats and Republicans. Great Republican Chafee from Rhode Island; Danforth from Missouri; Hatfield from Oregon; all these great Republicans. We did things together. It hasn’t been that way lately, and that’s too bad.

Richard Davis: So you gave a talk at BYU, and you said something like, “I’m a Democrat, not despite the fact I’m Mormon, but because I am.” So I think you were trying to say it’s connected, right?

Harry Reid: I think it’s really connected. I think that the church, going back to the days of Joseph Smith who ran for president, had a very, very progressive campaign—abolish slavery and establish a national bank. He did things that were really unheard of at the time, and I think that he was an exemplar to me—why we need to be involved in politics. I’m a tremendous admirer of Joseph Smith. Forget about the spirituality of all that—just as a person, I’m very impressed with Joseph Smith, what he did. He died at thirty-eight. In prison for six months in Liberty Jail, arrested scores of times for his beliefs. I’m a big Joseph Smith fan.

Richard Davis: So are there principles of the gospel that you think connect to the Democratic Party that keep you a Democrat and a church member?

Harry Reid: I think that I’ve been very satisfied and happy with the General Authorities on their positions on immigration. They’ve always been very, very visionary on immigration. They’ve always been a leader in fair immigration, and that’s contrary to what we see with the Republican Party that uses immigrants to bash around. My wife’s dad, my father-in-law, was born in Russia, immigrated to the United States. He was run out of Russia because he’s Jewish. I think that our stand on immigration is a really important stand to show the humanity of the church and supporting immigrants. Immigration has made this country a better place. So, you know, I think the church has been extremely important for firming up my foundation as a member of the church.

Richard Davis: So, just to kind of sum up, what lessons have you learned about politics that you’d like to share with young Latter-day Saints who are interested in careers in government, but they’re concerned about whether they can maybe live the gospel?

Harry Reid: I think that what I found in the Senate and in the House—same thing when I served there—is young men and women, the brightest Ivy League schools, Stanford, all over the country, come to Washington to try to make a difference. Young people, members of the church, should get involved in government. I have a long list of people who made a tremendous difference in our country by working through me and my staff, and they knew that I took the glory, but they knew that they were responsible for what I was able to get done. They felt good about that, and I will be beholden to them my whole life.

I want to repeat: young people should get involved in government. Members of the church should get involved in government; they should. If they feel right about it—run for public office. So you lose once. I remember I didn’t win all my races, and I made it just fine.

I think they should understand that they if don’t run for public office, they can serve at the city level, county level, state level. Come to Washington. They’re great places for young people to make a difference.