Dirty Harry Reid: desert land deal lubricates legislation?

Surprisingly, the Los Angeles Times continues its multi-year effort to uncover "Dirty" Harry Reid scandals. The latest comes in "A deal in the desert for Sen. Reid?" by Chuck Neubauer and Tom Hamburger:

...In 2002, Reid (D-Nev.) paid $10,000 to a pension fund controlled by Clair Haycock, a Las Vegas lubricants distributor and his friend for 50 years. The payment gave the senator full control of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City that Reid and the pension fund had jointly owned. Reid's price for the equivalent of 60 acres of undeveloped desert was less than one-tenth of the value the assessor placed on it at the time.

Six months after the deal closed, Reid introduced legislation to address the plight of lubricants dealers who had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies. It was an issue the Haycock family had brought to Reid's attention in 1994, according to a source familiar with the events.

If Reid were to sell the property for any of the various estimates of its value, his gain on the $10,000 investment could range from $50,000 to $290,000...

...In a statement, Reid's spokesman Jon Summers said that the transaction was not a gift and that the price was due to the property's history and the fact that only a partial interest was sold. Reid's action on the lubricants issue was unrelated to the sale and reflected the senator's interest in fairness for small businesses, Summers said...

Here's a previous Harry Reid scandal. In 1993 Reid opposed illegal immigration, but since then he's had a change of heart: he's the sponsor of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007: S9, and he supported illegal aliens who'd been brought in to take jobs from American hurricane victims.

Politics · Sun, 01/28/2007 - 09:35 · · Importance: 1