One of a kind: No greater compliment for a politician than to say ‘he was a decent man’
Not just a factor of his 6-foot, 7-inch height, Alan K. Simpson was a giant in Wyoming political history. The former 18-year U.S. senator for Wyoming died in Cody early Friday, March 14, at the age of 93.
To his wife of 70 years, Ann; his three children, Bill, Colin and Susan; and brother Pete, all of Cody, we grieve with the families as we celebrate the remarkable life of a decent man.
Both sitting U.S. senators for Wyoming, Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso, took to the Senate floor Friday to praise Al Simpson and lead the state — indeed the nation — in mourning his death.
“Al was larger than life and spent his entire working life working on behalf of the state and the people he loved,” Lummis noted.
Prior to serving 18 years as a U.S. senator between 1979 and 1997, Simpson represented Park County as a member of the Wyoming State House of Representatives for 13 years from 1965 through 1977. This was in the time when legislators were elected by county-wide vote rather than by House or Senate district voters.
Al wasn’t done when he retired from the Senate. Over the next 28 years, he met every call to duty as the elder statesman he was. And always with characteristic straight talk and wit.
Measured against today’s atmosphere of super-charged partisanship, I’m impressed with the across the aisle reach of Simpson’s political life. He was a member of the Senate’s Republican leadership for 10 years as majority and minority whip in the Senate. But he talked to Democrats.
A 1986 piece of legislation that bears Al’s name — the Simpson-Mazzoli Act — was a rare triumph in the immigration reform world. Simpson and Democrat Ramano L. Mazzoli of Kentucky were chairs of the respective immigration subcommittees in the Senate and House. The bill, introduced first by Simpson in the Senate in 1985, legalized most undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the country prior to Jan. 1, 1984, and made it illegal to knowingly hire an illegal immigrant going forward. The bill was signed by President Ronald Reagan.
Another classic of across the aisle bipartisanship was a popular weekly radio program that paired Democrat Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sen. Al Simpson. Called Face-Off, the program on the Mutual Broadcasting System ran for eight years in the 1980s and 1990s with the two senators debating the issues of the times five days a week.
After retiring from the Senate in 1997, Al Simpson was called back to the national stage by President Barack Obama in 2010 as co-chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. His co-chair was Democrat Erskine Bowles, Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton. The commission traveled the nation for two years, preaching deficit reduction and the overarching goal of saving Social Security.
Closer to home, the creation of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation’s Mineta-Simpson Institute at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center between Powell and Cody, is itself the product of humanity and friendship without regard to party. Mineta, a California Democrat congressman, and Republican Sen. Simpson served in Congress at the same time after the two had famously met as Boy Scouts at the Heart Mountain Internment Camp where Mineta was held during World War II. They reunited in Washington and collaborated on the 1988 Civil Liberties Act which, among other things, formally apologized to Japanese Americans held behind barbed wire during the war.
In July of 2022, bipartisanship was celebrated again when President Joe Biden presented Al Simpson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his years of public service and statesmanship. President Biden praised Simpson for “forging real relationships, even with people on the other side of the aisle” and for being “one of the most decent, stand-up, genuine guys I’ve ever served with.”
Alan Simpson gave immeasurable service to the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody and served as the board chair for many years.
This is just a glimpse. There is so much more, including his years as a trustee of Northwest College in Powell.
I invite you to sit and reflect, as I did, on the main street bench at the corner of Second and Bent streets, a gift to the City of Powell during the downtown redevelopment project of the 1990s. The bench bears the simple plaque, donated by Al and Ann Simpson in memory of Milward Simpson (former Wyoming governor and U.S. senator and Al’s father).
What a life, what a decent man.