WASHINGTON (MarketWatch)—Here’s one thing Sen. Harry Reid says he won’t do when he leaves Congress: become a lobbyist.
“I’d rather go to Singapore and have them beat me with whips,” Reid, who announced last week he won’t seek re-election in 2016, told the New York Times in an interview published Thursday.
The 75-year-old Nevada Democrat, his party’s leader in the Senate, said on March 27 that he wouldn’t run for his seat again. He told the Times that he’s had calls from “lots of people,” including former Vice President Al Gore. But he said he did not know what he wanted to do when his current term ends, in January 2017.
Also read: Five big moments from Harry Reid’s Senate career.
If Reid changed his mind and did become a lobbyist, he’d join the ranks of scores of other lawmakers who have left Congress and joined the lobbying business. The Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based organization that tracks both money in politics and lobbying, lists more than 400 former members of Congress who are either lobbyists or perform very similar work.
Reid didn’t elaborate on his Singapore comment—presumably made in jest—in the Times interview.
Caning is a form of punishment in Singapore. The practice grabbed headlines in 1994, when an American teenager named Michael Fay was caned for breaking the city-state’s vandalism laws.
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