Adam Nagourney’s profile of Harry Reid for the New York Times Magazine includes a potentially misleading statement about Harry Reid’s feelings toward gambling (emphasis added):

By reputation and appearance, Reid, who is 70, is one of the blander elected officials in Washington. Upon closer inspection, he is deeply and deceptively interesting. He is a senator from Nevada who hates gambling (“The only people who make money from gambling are the joints and government”); a backroom deal-maker who does not drink alcohol or coffee; a Washington celebrity who sniffs at the dinner-and-party circuit.

Harry Reid may personally dislike gambling, but as I learned when I worked in Nevada politics, you don’t become an elected official there as an opponent of the casinos. Reid has certainly taken anti-gambling positions, but they typically take the form of preventing competition with casinos in his state (i.e. opposing Internet gambling, Indian casinos, etc.). There’s a reason Reid has received over $500,000 in campaign contributions from casino and gambling interests since 2005.

[Disclosure: I worked on Ed Bernstein’s Senate campaign in Nevada in 2000.]