Ex-prize-fighting Mormon takes helm of US Senate

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - Just one year ago, Democratic Leader Harry Reid announced on the US Senate floor that it would take a "miracle" for Democrats to win enough races to take back Congress's upper chamber from the Republicans.

He proved this week that miracles do happen, after the improbable capture of the Senate by his Democrats from ruling Republicans.

Now, Reid now is ready for a turn on one of the biggest stages in American public life, becoming the Senate's new majority leader.

"It's time for bipartisanship, it's time for open government, transparency, and it's a time for results," a giddy Reid told a victory rally in Washington Thursday.

"They've set a very bad example in not working with us," he said chiding the White House and governing Republicans.

"We're not following in that example," said Reid, 66, who has been his party's Senate leader since November 2004.

The Senate victory came a day after the House also fell to Democrats, giving the party control of both chambers for the first time in a dozen years.

Laconic and soft-spoken, the Senate leader, a former prize-fighter, was born and raised in the obscure mining town of Searchlight, Nevada on December 2, 1939, in a house with no hot water or indoors toilets.

Reid refers frequently to his humble origins -- his father was a miner, his mother a laundress, and neither parent graduated from high school.

He hitchhiked 40 miles (65 kilometers) 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.

Quixotic, he once filibustered the Republicans by himself for nine hours, by reading from the history book he wrote about his hometown of Searchlight.

Reid is more conservative than most other Democrats in the Senate. A practicing Mormon, he is staunchly against abortion rights -- a stance that sometimes finds him working at cross purposes with others in his Democratic caucus.

He has had frosty relations with the Bush administration, but he said late Wednesday that both sides have vowed to work hard for cooperation following the election.

"The president, I talked to him today. He was in a good mood. He congratulated me, and said he wanted to work with us," Reid told CNN television late Wednesday.

"I said: 'Mr. President, that's what you said two years ago, and we have gotten nothing done. I really mean it. I hope you really mean it. And I look forward to doing this'," he said.

It was always apparent that Democrats had an outside shot at winning the majority, having entered the November 7 election six seats away from a majority in the 100-member Senate.

After Virginia Senator George Allen on Thursday conceded defeat in his nail-biter race against Democratic challenger Jim Webb, Reid had the win he needed for a 51-to-49 seat edge over Republicans.