Former US Senate leader Harry Reid dies at 82

Veteran figure in Democratic party rose to upper chamber from humble beginnings

Former US Senate majority leader Harry Reid has died at the age of 82. Photo: EPA

Former US Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who rose from humble beginnings to lead the upper chamber during the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, has died aged 82.

"I am heart-broken to announce the passing of my husband," his wife, Landra, said in a statement released to US media. She said he died "peacefully... surrounded by our family."

Reid, who used his experience in Congress to help Mr Obama steer his landmark Affordable Care Act through the Senate, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2018.

Reid was born and raised in the mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, on December 2, 1939 in a house with no hot water or indoor toilets.

A prize fighter in his youth, he used his boxing instincts to work his way up to becoming one of the longest-serving majority leaders in the history of the US senate, and even called his memoir The Good Fight.

Current Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said Reid was "one of the most amazing individuals I've ever met."

"He never forgot where he came from and used those boxing instincts to fearlessly fight those who were hurting the poor and middle class," Mr Schumer wrote on Twitter.

Reid was elected to the Senate in 1986 and became the upper chamber's Democratic leader in the 2004 elections. He served as Senate majority leader from 2007 to 2015.

He often referred to his working class origins – his father was a miner, his mother a laundress and neither parent graduated from high school.

He hitchhiked 65 kilometres as a teenager to attend the nearest high school and then graduated from Utah State University and put himself through George Washington University Law School by working nights as a member of the US Capitol police.

In lieu of a statement, former president Obama made public a letter he had written to Reid shortly before his death, in which he said: "I wouldn't have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn't have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Reid a "titan," describing him as "a leader of immense courage and ferocious conviction who worked tirelessly to achieve historic progress for the American people."

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, said Reid's rise from poverty to political power was a "quintessentially American story, and it took Harry's legendary toughness, bluntness and tenacity to make it happen."