Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Erick Studenicka | U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, visits Nevada Army Guard Soldiers in the 1864th Transportation...... read more read more
With incumbent U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., in a tight political contest against right-wing firebrand Sharron Angle in 2010, the long-time senator garnered endorsements from many who didn’t align with him politically, including former Nevada adjutant general, retired Maj. Gen. Drennan “Tony” Clark.
“Our political philosophies are at different ends of the political ruler,” said Clark, who first met Reid in the 1960s when they worked as attorneys in Nevada. “I’m a hard right conservative, he is very liberal. (Reid) said, ‘I know we are on different ends on the political spectrum, but would you support me.’ I said, ‘Absolutely. You have my support.’ I went on TV and radio for him as a member of ‘Republicans for Reid’… Reid was so good to us. By that, I mean the National Guard.”
While it’s impossible for many to view Reid — “Nevada’s Machiavelli,” according to one political columnist in the state — outside the prism of Washington politics, his imprint on the Nevada National Guard runs unarguably deep.
More than a year removed from his 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate, Reid’s legacy is evident in Nevada Guard state-of-the-art facilities and upgraded aircraft fleets. According to statistics compiled by the senator’s office, more than $140 million in infrastructure appropriations and about $80 million in equipment went to the Nevada Guard as a result of Reid’s efforts from 2001-2016 (half his time in the Senate), not to mention millions more into coffers of federal military assets in Nevada.
A mentor’s influence
Reid, born in Searchlight, Nev., said his history teacher at Basic High School in Henderson and eventual Nevada governor, Mike O’Callaghan, laid the foundation for his own support of the military.
O’Callaghan, Nevada’s governor from 1971-1979, lost part of his left leg in a mortar blast during combat in the Korean War.
When O’Callaghan ran for governor, he convinced Reid to run for lieutenant governor. Both won their statewide elections in 1970.
“Before I got to Congress, I already had a lot of admiration for the Guard and of course O’Callaghan really helped with that a great deal,” Reid said during an interview in his Las Vegas office last fall. “He was proud of the fact that he had control of the Guard. I don’t believe we’ve ever had a governor who understood the military as much as O’Callaghan.”
O’Callaghan — one of the most popular governors in Nevada history, winning re-election in 1974 by a 4-to-1 margin — consistently advocated for the Guard while in Carson City. He received federal funding for the construction of the Nevada Army Guard’s aviation facility in Stead. Additionally, in 1977, when the Nevada Legislature voted to create law that required state or local government workers to forfeit part of their pay while on active duty or National Guard training, O’Callaghan vetoed the bill, and was quoted in news reports saying the Reserve and Guard were “an integral part of our national all-volunteer military system” and “to encourage this willingness to serve, we must offer some strong incentives.”
“He’s a very typical warrior,” Reid said of O’Callaghan. “That’s what he was. He was proud of it. He wanted to make sure that people who served in the military were give the dignity they needed.”
In 1974, Reid lost a U.S. Senate race to Paul Laxalt by 611 votes. In 1977, O’Callaghan re-directed his mentee’s career and appointed Reid to the Nevada Gaming Commission.
Mr. Reid goes to Washington
After four years on the gaming commission — taking on the mob and working to reform gambling in the state — Reid won the U.S. House of Representatives District 1 seat in Las Vegas in 1982 and served in Congress for four years. In 1986, he won the U.S. Senate seat left vacant after Laxalt’s retirement.
At about that time, Nevada Gov. Richard Bryan appointed Reno attorney and Nevada Air Guard officer Drennan Clark as the state’s adjutant general, based largely on Reid’s suggestion, Clark said.
“We were very active in Washington trying to make sure our Guard units were well resourced,” Clark said of his tenure as the third longest-serving adjutant general in Nevada history (1986-2001). “I was the first adjutant general really fighting in Washington from Nevada.”
Clark said he first met Reid in the 1960s. The firm Clark worked at, Guild, Guild and Cunningham in Reno, represented multiple Las Vegas clients and kept an office suite in southern Nevada at Beckley, Singleton and Jemison, where Reid practiced.
“We became friends,” Reid said. “There were always lots of people (adjutants general) who would come to Washington…people within the Guard. You knew who they were, but they weren’t people you read about in the papers like General Clark.”
Within five years of Reid entering the U.S. Senate, the Nevada National Guard began its conversion from the CH-54 Skycrane to CH-47 Chinook aircraft. Soon thereafter, the Nevada Army Guard began its transition from UH-1 Huey to UH-60 Black Hawk aircraft.
In 1995, the Nevada Air National Guard converted to C-130s after the U.S. Air Force retired F-4 reconnaissance jets.
Expansion in the post-9/11 Era
During this time of rapid Nevada Guard equipment modernization, Clark offered Reid one of his assistants, then-Lt. Robert Herbert.
Herbert, a CH-54 pilot, advocated extensively for the Nevada Army Guard’s upgrade to a CH-47 Chinook fleet.
Meanwhile, Reid sought a military specialist for policy initiatives during his rise in Senate leadership, and Herbert came on the senator’s staff through a Congressional fellowship.
“He was interested in details,” Reid said. “For those of us who are in a leadership position in government, you want someone who can write a memo. Anybody can write one, but one that means something — Bob was very good at that. When his time was up as a Congressional fellow, I checked with the Guard to see if I could work something out permanently.”
Herbert became Reid’s legislative assistant in 2001. He remained a traditional soldier in the Nevada Army Guard as Reid served as senate minority and majority leader in the post-9/11, wartime era. In 2004, Herbert became the senator’s director of appropriations and senior policy advisor.
“It was an amazing journey to be with him during his ascension to Senate leader,” said Herbert, who was promoted to the rank of major general last summer.
Reid served as the Senate minority whip (2003-2005), Senate minority leader (2005-2007) and Senate majority leader (2007-2015) before his retirement in 2017.
The federal funding obtained for Nevada flowed to a laundry list of new facilities: Nevada Army Guard Las Vegas Readiness Center ($26 million in 2010), Nevada Army Guard Field Maintenance Shop ($23 million in 2012), Nevada Air Guard Intelligence facility ($16.8 million in 2006), Nevada Air Guard Fire Station ($10.8 million in 2010) and more than a dozen others.
“In those 20 years of working in the U.S. Senate, I took every opportunity to support the National Guard,” Herbert said. “Every guard installation in Nevada was either refurbished or replaced.”
Meanwhile, Reid opposed the Department of Defense’s push to remove C-130 aircraft from the Nevada Air National Guard Base in Reno during the Base Realignment and Closure round in 2005, which helped save the state’s largest Nevada Air Guard unit.
Funding also flowed into the state’s active duty installations, including Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas and the Naval Air Station in Fallon.
“We’ve taken good care of Nellis (and Fallon),” Reid said. “(Nellis) is the Cadillac of bases. When I came into Congress, everything there was World War II vintage. There is not a World War II remnant of anything anymore.”
‘New York Yankee criticism’
Even in retirement, Reid remains active in politics and opinionated on myriad issues, including those concerning the military. During an interview last fall, Reid railed against the intelligence provided that led to the now-15-year-old decision to enter the Iraq War and bemoaned civilian contracts that eliminate uniformed military personnel jobs, saying, “I think we were a better military when the Army prepared their own food.”
Reid is aware that even with his history backing funding of the military, many service members and Nevada National Guardsmen did not vote for him. When asked about his critics and how he viewed them during his career and in retirement, Reid offered a baseball analogy.
“I know a lot about baseball. I can’t give you 10 reasons why I don’t like the New York Yankees. I just don’t like them,” Reid said. “So, I figure that’s how they (my critics) feel about me. They don’t know me. They feel about me how I feel about the Yankees.
“People may not have voted for me, but they always knew I told them how I felt and I felt pretty good about that. So, the criticism is something I’ve learned to accept. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all New York Yankee criticism.”
| Date Taken: | 04.10.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 04.10.2018 18:13 |
| Story ID: | 272554 |
| Location: | LAS VEGAS, NV, US |
| Web Views: | 635 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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