Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader and Nevada's longest-serving member of Congress, has died. He was 82.
Reid died today, "peacefully" and surrounded by friends "following a courageous, four-year battle with pancreatic cancer", Landra Reid said of her husband in a statement.
"Harry was a devout family man and deeply loyal friend," she said. "We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support from so many over these past few years. We are especially grateful for the doctors and nurses that cared for him. Please know that meant the world to him."
Funeral arrangements would be announced in coming days, she said.
The combative former boxer-turned-lawyer was widely-acknowledged as one of toughest dealmakers in the US Congress, a conservative Democrat in an increasingly polarised chamber who vexed lawmakers of both parties with a brusque manner and this motto: "I would rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight."
