The gutsy decision that saved Harry Reid’s career and made him a hero to Latinos

*I’m torn by this article. On the one hand, it gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how the Latino vote is transforming the political machinations at high levels. On the other, there’s an implicit idea that Sen. Reid’s backing of the DREAM Act wasn’t motivated so much because it was the right thing to do, but because it was a hail-Mary play to win an election. In that sense it wasn’t so much gutsy as it was desperate politics, so it’s a wash. In the end Reid got the Latino voter numbers he wanted and won reelection. Now that he’s retiring from the Senate, there’ll be other candidates vying for Latinos in Nevada, because Reid showed them how it’s done. And that’s not an entirely bad thing. VL

By Dara Lybd, Vox

In September 2010, in the toughest re-election campaign of his career, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did something his own polling told him not to do. He decided to bring the DREAM Act, allowing young unauthorized immigrants to get eventual citizenship, up for a vote in the Senate, and — after its failure — promised to bring it up again.

It paid off tremendously. Reid surprised everyone by winning reelection by a decent margin over Republican challenger Sharron Angle, and he credited his victory to Latino turnout. And the race changed the conventional wisdom about immigration politics — turning Democrats from a party ambivalent about the issue out of fear of losing white voters, to one willing to embrace it for the purpose of winning Latino votes.

But it’s easy to forget just how big the shift was — and how surprising Reid’s decision was at the time.

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