- New biography reveals why Harry Reid doubled down on Mitt Romney tax lie.
- Private emails say Obama's team was “on the table dancing” because of the news.
- Book author says Reid was brutal because he didn’t care what others thought of him.
The author of a forthcoming biography of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid published previously unreleased email exchanges last week that shed light on the political machinations behind Reid’s false claims about then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Longtime Nevada reporter Jon Ralston, writing for his personal Substack, revealed private emails showing Reid’s closest advisers pushing for the Nevada Democrat to double down on claims during the 2012 presidential election that Romney had not paid taxes for 10 years.
Romney released two years of tax documents showing he did pay taxes during the years in question.
The email messages also highlighted how Reid’s tactics were received with celebration by the campaign team of President Barack Obama. More information will be included about the saga in Ralston’s biography, “The Game Changer,” to be released in January.
“What did characterize him was being very brutal and in a way most politicians were not publicly,” Ralston said in an interview with the Deseret News. “He didn’t care what people thought of him, and so he just he was willing to do things that others would not.”
What did the emails say?
In one of the exchanges, top Reid aide David Krone coordinated with Reid adviser Susan McCue about which journalists would likely give Reid a friendly platform to target Romney to keep the national news cycle “focused on Romney.”
“We are in this all the way so no backing down now,” Krone wrote to McCue. “It would be incredible if Reid were to say he will resign if he is wrong. Really puts the burden on Romney. I know Reid can’t go that far but something like that.”
The advisers reveled in the negative reaction Republicans were having to Reid’s tactics, with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham going on cable news to accuse Reid of “lying about his statement of knowing something about Romney.”
The panic demonstrated by supporters of Romney — who became wealthy as a co-founder of the private equity firm Bain Capital — was exactly what Reid had hoped for, according to email exchanges, which record Krone saying the GOP “totally walked into the left hook.”
Reid’s team weren’t the only ones celebrating. Ralston also reported Krone saying, “I think we did alright,” upon learning that Jim Messina, a top Obama adviser, was “on the table dancing” because of the news coverage centered on Obama’s opponent.
What did Reid say?
In the final months of the 2012 presidential election, Reid launched near-daily attacks against Romney in interviews and from the Senate floor based on anonymous sources, speculation and hearsay.
In one interview, Reid told the then Huffington Post that a Bain investor had called him to say Romney hadn’t paid any taxes in 10 years. Reid refused to identify the investor and admitted he could not verify the claim, but said this was all the more reason for Romney to release more personal tax returns.
“Reid, during his career, said a lot of pretty brutal and sometimes vicious things about people publicly,” Ralston told the Deseret News. “But this was an allegation without any evidence when he made it, and so I think that’s what made it different, and that’s why it brought so much criticism.”
Reid re-upped his allegation multiple times during the remainder of the election cycle, repeating that he had “an extremely credible source,” and demanding that Romney release “several years’ worth of tax returns just like nominees of both parties have done for decades.”
Romney published his 2010 tax returns several months earlier, in January, and eventually released his 2011 returns, too, showing that he paid around 14% in taxes those two years on his income that was largely derived from capital gains.
Reid’s comments were criticized by many at the time as political gamesmanship. The allegation was declared false by The Washington Post fact-checker, which gave it Four Pinnochios, and PolitiFact, which gave it a “Pants on Fire” rating.
Did Reid ever apologize?
Reid never retracted his comments and during interviews following his announcement that he would retire in 2015 after 30 years in the Senate, he repeatedly said he did not feel any remorse for what he said or how it impacted the election.
“I don’t regret that at all,” Reid told CNN’s Dana Bash. “They can call it whatever they want. Romney didn’t win, did he?”
In a 2016 interview with The Washington Post, Reid called his tax accusation “one of the best things I’ve ever done,” because he believed that Romney had not been transparent with his taxes.
“I tried to get one of the outside groups, but nobody would do it. So I did it,” Reid said. “Here’s something I learned from my father, if you’re going to do something, don’t do it half-(expletive), don’t play around. With the Mitt Romney stuff, I didn’t play around.”
He later told The Washington Post that he couldn’t think of a line that shouldn’t be crossed when it came to political warfare. This was the main criticism Ralston made in a 2012 column he wrote that was shuttered by Las Vegas Sun owner Brian Greenspun, a Reid ally.
Ralston left the Sun after the incident, and later published the piece independently, writing that Reid represented a uniquely influential force in politics because he was willing to do “whatever it takes to win” because he was both “fearless and shameless.”
And Reid held on to this conviction, that the ends justify the means, to the end of his life, according to Ralston, who said he asked Reid about his accusations against Romney again before he died in 2021 of pancreatic cancer.
“Harry Reid’s approach to almost everything, including this, was never look back,” Ralston told the Deseret News. “I asked him again, shortly before he died, whether he regretted it, and he seemed not only not to regret it, but to be completely convinced that is what cost Romney the election.”
A fellow Latter-day Saint
In his biography of Romney, “Romney: A Reckoning,” Atlantic writer and Deseret News contributor McKay Coppins reported that Romney had one final interaction with Reid, years later when Romney was a senator from Utah.
The two men — both members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — agreed to meet in Salt Lake City, according to Coppins’ account, where Romney expected to receive an apology for the tax accusations.
Reid did not apologize for spreading the rumor without evidence. Instead, he reportedly apologized for “being so flip” in bragging about how he believed that his accusations had won Obama the election.
“Harry was a pretty partisan guy,” Romney told Coppins. “I just didn’t recognize how extraordinarily partisan he was.”
Reid’s hardball tactics remain a feature of the U.S. Senate, demonstrated by the current shutdown, according to Ralston. But Reid was also a devoted member of his faith who sincerely believed what he did was for the better of Nevada and the country, Ralston said.
The Church of Jesus Christ has issued statements declaring itself strictly “neutral in matters of party politics.” The general handbook says, “The Church does not endorse any political party or candidate. Nor does it advise members how to vote.”
In his book, Ralston details how invested Reid was in his personal scripture study and in his church calling as a Sunday School teacher. Like most people, Reid appeared able to “compartmentalize” his religious ideals from his political pursuits, Ralston said.
“He believed the cause was righteous, whether it was for his state, for the Democratic Party, or for his family,” Ralston said. “He believed he was doing the right thing no matter what, even if his methods weren’t exactly always so genteel.”