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Harry Reid, Bill Frist, My Boss’s Coma and Control of the U.S. Senate


The next day, I was with Tim’s family in another private hospital waiting room, watching CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta give surreal reports on “Tim Johnson’s brain,” when who unexpectedly comes into the room but then-Republican (and about to retire) Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, along with the attending physician of the U.S. Capitol, Dr. John Eisold. Suddenly, the dark political reality of the situation came crashing down on us. It wasn’t lost on anyone that the Democrats had just won barely enough seats to take control of the Senate and make Harry Reid the new majority leader, but only with a very narrow 51-49 seat majority. As CNN and other cable news networks reported ad nauseam on the hospital TVs, if Tim died, Republicans would keep control of the Senate, as his replacement would be chosen by South Dakota’s Republican governor, Mike Rounds, and Vice President Dick Cheney would have broken the 50-50 Senate tie in favor of the GOP. Then, as now, control of the Senate hinged on just one seat — and, in moments like that, one senator’s health can become a matter of extreme national importance.
It was more than a little jarring to see Frist. Two years earlier, in 2004, he had broken the Senate precedent that a party leader doesn’t campaign against his counterpart from the other party when he traveled to South Dakota to campaign against Daschle, Tim’s close friend and then the Senate Democratic leader. Some of us — like me — still had very hard feelings about it. It wasn’t at all odd that Eisold was there — his office was first on the scene when Tim needed help the day before, and checking on a member of Congress who was in a Washington, D.C. hospital was part of his duties. However, try as I might, I couldn’t make any sense of why Frist was there — it seemed a little odd, as Tim and Frist had no relationship whatsoever, but Frist didn’t stay longer than required to pay his respects to Tim’s wife, Barb, and then he and Eisold said goodbye and left, presumably to return to the Senate.
Or, so I thought. A few minutes after Frist and Eisold left, I went to check on Tim and, to my astonishment, Frist and Eisold were in Tim’s hospital room, chatting with his doctors, while Tim was lying comatose in bed, hooked up to various machines. “What the hell?” I thought; no one had given the Republican Senate majority leader, of all people, permission to traipse into Tim’s room. It now seemed to me that Frist’s visit to the family was a ruse and that he was there on a reconnaissance mission to learn Tim’s prognosis — whether he would live or die, or what shape he would be in if he recovered. (Editor’s note: Frist says, “I was there as a friend and physician.”)
This wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what to do — I certainly didn’t have the standing to kick the Senate majority leader out of Tim’s room. But then it occurred to me to call Harry Reid — he would know what to do — so I did.
When I told Reid where Frist and Eisold were, he exploded in anger. “What the hell is Eisold doing bringing Frist there? He knows better than that!” And then, “You tell Frist that he is not to talk to the media when he leaves the hospital, and I’m going to talk to Eisold when he gets back to the Capitol!”
When I spoke to Frist, he replied, “Oh, I’d never do that!” And he didn’t comment, but he also refused to follow the hospital’s PR person’s suggestion that he exit unobtrusively through a back door, instead walking out the front past the phalanx of network and cable news cameras lined up in what seemed like a “death watch.” I thought: Frist wanted the photo op of his visit to the ailing Democratic senator. Welcome to Washington …

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