Dear Senator Reid,

You have represented our state Nevada for longer than I have been alive. Waking up yesterday morning to a notification from a news app that said you are going retire in 2016 had me thinking, I have never known a Nevada without Senator Reid.

I know open letters to political leaders haven’t exactly been your favorite thing to read in the last few weeks (Cc: 47 GOP Senators). Nonetheless, I figured that today, above all days, you deserve a thank you for the unparalleled leadership, determination and wisdom that you have brought to a nation and a Senate with a bleak political outlook.

When I first met you, you had taken time out of your stop in Reno to have lunch with my 89-year old grandfather, who had known you from your days as a trial lawyer in Nevada. As we all munched ricotta cannoli and the two of you swapped stories about your lawyer days, I’ll never forget my Grandpa tearing up and telling me, “This is a big deal.”

Whether they were old friends, people you had never met, and whatever their problems or wants, you always made the people of Nevada and this country feel like they mattered, like they were a big deal. We will always be lucky to have been represented by a man like you.

I worked in your office last summer as an intern. I will never forget the time you took, despite being majority leader, to meet with each and every intern in your office, remember our names, and make us feel valuable. Sitting around a table in your office when you stood and thanked the intern from West Point for his service, or when you asked three interns to sing “America the Beautiful” for the entire Democrat caucus, everyone felt welcome. The constant concern for ordinary people that you have carried with you from your upbringing in Searchlight, hitchhiking 40 miles every day to attend high school, is something every elected official should emulate.

Pundits will speculate for days about why you are retiring. They’ll blog about your exercise accident over the holidays and wonder, in the silly words of The Atlantic, if you have been “felled by a rubber band.”

I know — like anyone who knows you’ve run 20 marathons and can do more pushups in a single week than I have managed to do in an entire life — that an exercise mishap is not causing you to hang up the cleats in 2016. I know that you could speak out against the Koch brothers and the destructively partisan nature of the GOP until you turn 100, and frankly, I’d enjoy listening to it.

“We have to make sure that the Democrats take control of the Senate again,” you said. “And I feel it is inappropriate for me to soak up all those resources on me when I could be devoting those resources to the caucus.”

Of all the words you said in the video announcing your retirement, those will perhaps be the least quoted by your detractors and supporters — but I believe them to be the most important. One of the hardest things about being a leader is to know when it is time to turn over the reins. Your decision to do so not only shows humility, but an acute concern for the future of the party rather than your own career. Be they Republicans or Democrats who speculate about your retirement, we should all share admiration for your desire to go out at the top of your game, and with historic success.

According to Nevada political guru Jon Ralston, The Affordable Care Act, which gave millions of uninsured Americans access to affordable health care, and will be seen as one of Obama’s landmark achievements, should have been called “ReidCare.” During 2009 and 2010, you held together every Democrat in the Senate — an impressive and near impossible feat — to overcome filibuster after filibuster to pass bills that stimulated the economy, fought for equal pay for women, and reformed the financial sector.

As journalist Ezra Klein said, “This legacy is his [Reid’s] just as much as it is Obama’s.”

People will disagree for years to come over whether or not your legacy set the right course for our country. But no matter what side of that debate they stand on, everyone should admire that you devoted over 30 years of your life to public service, tirelessly representing a state and a people you believed in, all the while knowing that most of the credit for your greatest success will be given to the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Anyone who is able to perform at such a high standard well into their seventies (in an environment as stressful and hectic as the United States Congress, no less) deserves praise. Most Americans, given the choice, wouldn’t spend a week, let alone 30 years, in the same room as some of the people you have spent your life arguing with — just to make our state better. President Obama couldn’t be more correct in saying that you’ve done “more for Nevada than anyone.”

Sure, you’ve had your more politically challenged moments, but I’ll try and sell ocean-front property in Kansas to any politician who claims they’ve never gaffed or changed their mind. Sure, you messed up when you said there were “five white men” in the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, and yes, there was probably a more tactful way to refer to President Bush than, “a loser.” When the Democrats had the majority in the Senate the last few years, you rightfully railed against the use of the filibuster, but sometimes found it too tempting not to use when the Democrats were in the minority back in 2007. In the end, you left a legacy there too, by instituting the first restrictions on the filibusters use since 1975. And just like a Nevadan leaving the Sierra Nevada mountains after a weekend in the woods, you left your campsite better than it was when you found it.

From a Nevadan, thank you.

Sincerely,

Nathaniel Haas