Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared Thursday that his recent accident that left his face with broken bones and impaired vision would not impede his running for reelection next year.
“Nothing has changed,” Reid told reporters in his first news briefing since the New Year’s Day accident at his home outside Las Vegas, which also left him with a concussion and several broken ribs. “At this stage I’m fully intending to run,” he added.
In a winding 18-minute briefing, Reid said that doctors have told him the surgery he’s having next week on his right eye should be successful and that, if so, he could return to work full time the first week of February.
Related: Anti-Tax GOP Governors Find It Hard to Hold the Line
Reid has not been present on the Senate floor since the accident, which occurred just days before the new Congress started, and he formally lost his title of majority leader. He has largely worked from his home in the Ritz Carlton in the District’s West End neighborhood, where he’s received staff and held court on the phone for long stretches.
The senator said he is now up to walking for one hour a day, but his damaged right eye will not allow him to read.
The accident occurred when Reid was working out with an exercise band, which requires resistance maneuvers. According to Reid, that band snapped and flung him into cabinets in the room of his home. His right eye socket struck a cabinet, just missing his temple.
Reid was already considered the most politically endangered Democratic incumbent up for reelection in 2016, and his injury had raised the possibility that he might not seek reelection. Now 75, if he were to win another Senate term, he would be 83 when he completed it in 2022.
This article originally appeared in The Washington Post.
Read more at The Washington Post:
Abortion Bill Dropped
Sheldon Silver Arrested on Corruption Charges
Republicans Seek to One-Up Obama on Foreign Affairs
