On the rural roots of Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader, who died today aged 82

NPR's Susan Davis reports, with reference to his rural upbringing midway through her obituary:

Finding his roots

Born into poverty in the tiny Nevada town of Searchlight, where the two industries were mining and prostitution, Reid transformed his shame over his hardscrabble roots into the central narrative of his political career.

"I was ashamed, embarrassed about Searchlight. When I went to college, was in high school, law school, I just didn't want to talk about Searchlight," Reid recalled in his 2016 farewell address to the Senate.

One night he attended a speech at the University of Nevada in Reno by Roots author Alex Haley that changed his worldview.

He recalled, "[Haley] said, 'Be proud of who are you are. You can't escape who you are.' And I walked out of that event that night a different person, a new man. From that day forward, I was from Searchlight. When I got out of law school, I bought little pieces of property. So I had contacts there. My parents lived there, so I became Harry Reid, the guy from Searchlight."

His longtime combatant, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, nodded at Reid's roots in a statement marking his death.

"The runway that brought Harry to the upper chamber was nothing short of amazing," McConnell wrote. "His life's journey began in a house that lacked running water."

The Los Angeles Times obituary leads with his rural origin: 

He grew up in poverty in a house made of creosote-soaked railway ties with no indoor plumbing. 

Jonathan Martin writes for the New York Times: 

Even by the standards of the political profession, where against-the-odds biographies are common and modest roots an asset, what Mr. Reid overcame was extraordinary. He was raised in almost Dickensian circumstances in tiny Searchlight, Nev.: His home had no indoor plumbing, his father was an alcoholic miner who eventually died by suicide, and his mother helped the family survive by taking in laundry from local brothels.

The Washington Post obit by Michael H. Brown features this bit about Reid's upbringing in Searchlight: 

Harry M. Reid, a Nevada Democrat who rose from a hardscrabble mining town to become one of the longest-serving Senate majority leaders in history and a political force during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, died Dec. 28 at his home in Henderson, Nev.

And in an era when we aren't sure what to do with work--how much credit to give it, especially in an era where "white privilege" is so often credited for one's success--I love this quote: 

“I didn’t make it in life because of my athletic prowess,” [Reid] said in his 2016 retirement speech, at the end of five terms in the Senate. “I didn’t make it because of my good looks. I didn’t make it because I’m a genius. I made it because I worked hard.”

In an era of increasing elitism--including in the highest sectors of politics--one has to wonder how one born to harry Reid's circumstances and with his non-elite education, Utah State University and George Washington University Law School (where he studied while working as a Capitol Police Officer), would fare if starting out in today's national political climate.