Harry Reid also chided Republicans for refusing to vote on President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. | Getty Harry Reid: 'I learned a lot in honesty from a man who ran a whorehouse'

Harry Reid has served terms in both houses of Congress, but the retiring Democratic leader from Nevada learned a lot growing up from another house he wouldn’t necessarily call home: a whorehouse, by his account.

“I bet I’m the only senator that learned to swim at a whorehouse swimming pool,” the Senate minority leader told The Takeaway’s Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich in an interview published Thursday.


Reid recounted a childhood story that involved Willie Martello, who owned The El Rey Club — the state’s largest brothel. Martello would open the club one afternoon each week to let children swim, and when Reid was in high school, he said, he and a friend found bottles behind the club and put them in the back of the vehicle they were riding in to trade them in for money.

“That was dishonest, and he didn’t do anything until he saw me the next time,” Reid said. “And he called me, he says — you know, my name was Pinky, that’s what they called me — he said ‘but I think you’ve got a lot on the ball. You can make a life that’s gonna be a good life,’ he said, ‘but don’t ever steal.’”

“That meant a lot to me,” Reid explained. “I learned a lot in honesty from a man who ran a whorehouse: Don’t denigrate people who you think you’re better than because you can learn from anybody.”

But he didn’t spare Senate Republicans, who have remained steadfast in their refusal to hold hearings for President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

“I’ve been struck by the smiles we see around here with Republicans. They’re kind of self-assured: 'Oh, we’re sticking together, isn’t that wonderful?'" Reid said.

But the Nevada senator cast doubts over the success of the Senate GOP’s strategy, likening Republicans to fish chasing worms.

The fish are happy after they gulp down the worm but soon realize “there’s a big hook in that worm, and that doesn’t work out so well, and I think that’s basically what the Republicans are going to find,” he said. “They can be smiling today, but this has already hurt them. It’s made less competitive races more competitive, and I think they’re gonna lose the Senate for sure, and I think that’s going to hurt their quest for the White House. This is going to reverberate as it has through the entire society.”

Reid suggested that Republicans won’t give Garland, whom he praised as “a perfect candidate” for the high court, a hearing because they’re afraid and attributed the dysfunction in Congress to the GOP. Every Senate has had problems, he said, but they’ve all been minor compared with what arose after Obama’s election.

“The Republicans met after he was elected. They met for two days here in Washington — all the Republican big shots — to plan a strategy: how to take this guy out, this president that they felt was [an] illegitimate president,” he said.

Reid said Republicans “failed miserably” on their first goal to prevent Obama’s reelection but “succeeded admirably” in their second. “And that is they would oppose everything and anything that Obama wanted, and they’ve done that,” he said. “I’ve been here 34 years. There’s never been anything like the past 7½ years."

Reid remarked that he’s been envious of his Senate colleagues who are well liked. “But I would rather be who I am,” he said, in reference to criticism he’s gotten for speaking his mind. “Yes, I have to be candid, I think I sleep much better at night knowing not everybody agrees with me.”

After more than three decades in the Senate, Reid announced last year he wouldn’t seek reelection. “I wish I could stay here until I drop dead, but I want to be remembered for my first 34 years, not my last six,” he explained in the interview. “But I want everyone within the sound of my voice here today to understand what a joy it’s been — an honor — for me to serve in the Senate.”