Monday, Feb. 7, 2011 | 10:17 a.m.
Despite their entrenched political differences, Harry Reid's got a soft spot for at least one of the new member of the Tea Party in the Senate -- Mike Lee of Utah, whom he once locked in a garage as a prank.
That was just one episode of a relationship that developed between Lee and Reid, and their families, in the years the Senate's top Democrat served as the younger Tea Party Republican's mentor in the Mormon church, as told in a profile of Lee that ran in the Washington Post last week.
The relationship actually began as a friendship between Reid and Lee's father, Rex Lee, the Post reports, and their 11-year-old sons, now-Sen. Lee and Reid's son Josh, who remain friends.
The two don't see eye to eye on politics, but the story reveals a level of mutual respect between the two.
"They were some of the first real passionate Democrats that I ever knew," Lee told the Post.
"He is very very conservative ... but that's okay," Reid told the Post. "Mike is who he is."
"To put him in the same category as a Sharron Angle is kind of surprising, because I see them as completely different types of people," Reid's son Josh added in the Post article. "I wouldn't consider Sharron Angle an intellectual person, but Mike is a scholar ... The tea party may be en vogue right now, but I think Mike's going to last a lot longer than the tea party."
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