Alan Simpson (American politician)

Simpson was born in Denver, Colorado, the son of Milward Simpson and the former Lorna Kooi. His middle name, Kooi, comes from his maternal grandfather, whose parents were Dutch immigrants.[3] In his youth, Simpson was a Boy Scout, and once visited Japanese American Boy Scouts who, along with their families, had been interned near Ralston, Wyoming, during World War II. There, he developed a friendship with Norman Mineta, who later became a Democratic U.S. representative from California, and the United States Secretary of Transportation in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.[4] Mineta and Simpson served together in Congress, and on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, and remained close friends.[5]

Simpson has an older brother, Peter K. Simpson of Cody, a historian and a former administrator at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, who served in the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1981 to 1984, having represented Sheridan County, while he was then an administrator at Sheridan College. Pete Simpson was the 1986 Republican gubernatorial nominee, having sought the office while his younger brother was serving in the U.S. Senate.[6]

Simpson grew to 6'7" (201 cm) and would become the tallest Senator in the United States history until being overtaken by 6'9" (206 cm) Luther Strange in 2017, 20 years after his retirement.[7] He would later claim to have had shrunken to 6'5" (195.5 cm) at 85.[8]

Alan Simpson graduated from Cody High School in Cody, Wyoming in 1949 and attended Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1950 for a postgraduate year. He graduated in 1954 from the University of Wyoming with a Bachelor of Science degree, and in 1958 with a Juris Doctor degree. Like his brother, he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity at the University of Wyoming.[9]

In 1954, he married the former Susan Ann Schroll, who was a fellow UW student from Greybull, Wyoming. He served in the United States Army in Germany from 1955 to 1956, with the 10th Infantry Regiment, Fifth Infantry Division, and with the 12th Armored Infantry Battalion, Second Armored Division.[10]

Simpson had several run-ins with the law during his youth. An amicus brief filed before the United States Supreme Court in the juvenile imprisonment cases Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida,[11] states:

In Simpson's words to this Court, "I was a monster."

In that brief, in support of the claimant in the Supreme Court case, Simpson admitted that, as a juvenile, he had been on federal probation for shooting mailboxes and punching a cop and that he "was a monster".[12]

One day in Cody, Wyoming, when Simpson was in high school, he and some friends "went out to do damage." They went to an abandoned war relocation structure and decided to "torch" it. They committed arson on federal property, a crime now punishable by up to twenty years in prison if no one is hurt, and punishable by up to life in prison if the arson causes a person's death. Luckily for Simpson, no one was injured in the blaze.

Simpson not only played with fire, but also with guns. He played a game with his friends in which they shot at rocks close to one another, at times using bullets they stole from the local hardware store. The goal of the game was to come as close as possible to striking someone without actually doing so. Again, Simpson was lucky: no one was killed or seriously injured, or caught by their parents.

Simpson and his friends went shooting throughout their community. They fired their rifles at mailboxes, blowing holes in several and killing a cow. They fired their weapons at a road grader. "We just raised hell," Simpson says. Federal authorities charged Simpson with destroying government property and Simpson pleaded guilty. He received two years of probation and was required to make restitution from his own funds – funds that he was supposed to obtain by holding down a job.

As Simpson has described it, "The older you get, the more you realize ... your own attitude is stupefying, and arrogant, and cocky, and a miserable way to live."[13]

Simpson stated "I was just dumb and rebellious and stupid. And a different person," adding "You're not who you are when you're 16 or 18. You're dumb and you don't care, and you think you are eternal."[14]

Simpson served from 1965 to 1977 in the Wyoming House of Representatives from Park County.

Simpson (second from left) in a Cabinet Room meeting with President Ronald Reagan, Bob Michel and Bob Dole, 1985

Simpson was elected to the United States Senate on November 7, 1978, but was appointed to the post early on January 1, 1979, following the resignation of Clifford P. Hansen, who had succeeded Milward Simpson, Alan Simpson's own father, in the seat. From 1985 to 1995, Simpson was the Republican whip, Assistant Republican Leader in the Senate, having served with then Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas. He was chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee from 1981 to 1985 and again from 1995 to 1997 when Republicans regained control of the Senate. He also chaired the Immigration and Refugee Subcommittee of Judiciary; the Nuclear Regulation Subcommittee; the Social Security Subcommittee and the Committee on Aging.[15]

Simpson fishing in Wyoming with President George H. W. Bush (center) and Senator Craig Thomas (left)

Simpson was a moderate conservative. He supported abortion rights and voted against a ban of late-term abortions which did not include an exception for physical health, only for life-threatening conditions, in 1995 and 1996. However he opposed federal funding for abortions and supported the Hyde Amendment. He was also the co-sponsor of a bill regulating immigration.

Simpson voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday and initially voted in favor of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (but voted to sustain President Reagan's veto).[16][17][18] Simpson voted in favor of the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1995, he lost the whip's job to Trent Lott of Mississippi,[19] and he did not seek reelection to the Senate in 1996. From 1997 to 2000, Simpson taught at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he served for two years as the Director of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School.

Simpson then returned to his home of Cody and practices law there with his two lawyer sons (William and Colin) in the firm of Simpson, Kepler and Edwards. The three are also partners in the firm of Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine of Englewood, Colorado. Colin M. Simpson, the third generation of his family in Wyoming politics, was a Republican member of the Wyoming House of Representatives who served as Speaker of the House for the 59th session of the Legislature, 2008 to March 2010. He was a candidate for governor in the primary in 2010, finishing fourth.

Simpson teaches periodically at his alma mater, the University of Wyoming at Laramie, with his brother Pete. He has completed serving as chairman of the UW capital "Campaign for Distinction," which raised $204 million. That success was celebrated by the gala event, "An Extraordinary Evening", featuring former President George H. W. Bush (who had reportedly considered Simpson for the vice presidency in 1988) and Vice President Dick Cheney, another UW alumnus, and his wife Lynne Cheney.

In 2001, Simpson became Honorary Chairman of the Republican Unity Coalition (RUC), a gay/straight alliance within the Republican Party.[20] In that capacity, Simpson recruited former President Gerald Ford to serve on the RUC advisory board.

In 2002, Simpson was involved in the Wyoming Republican gubernatorial primary on behalf of former Democrat Eli Bebout of Riverton.[21]

Simpson was one of four speakers chosen to eulogize President George H.W. Bush at his state funeral.[22]

National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

Simpson and Erskine Bowles meet with President Obama in 2010.

Simpson was appointed in 2010 to co-chair President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Erskine Bowles.[24]

Simpson has spoken extensively about the burden being placed on future generations by the structure of current entitlement programs. In an opinion piece, "Young Americans get the shaft" published in The Washington Post on June 13, 2012, Matt Miller recounted asking Simpson (then a US senator) in 1995 how to fix this problem. Miller stated that Simpson told him "nothing would change until someone like me could walk into his office and say, 'I'm from the American Association of Young People. We have 30 million members, and we're watching you, Simpson. You [mess with] us and we'll take you out.'"[25]

He has continued to advocate for fiscal responsibility as a board member of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget[26] and a founder of the Campaign to Fix the Debt.[27]

Presidential Medal of Freedom

Simpson awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden in July 2022

On July 1, 2022, the White House announced that Simpson would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[36]

The June 7, 1994, edition of the now-defunct supermarket tabloid Weekly World News reported that 12 U.S. senators were aliens from other planets, including Simpson. The Associated Press ran a follow-up piece which confirmed the tongue-in-cheek participation of Senate offices in the story. Then-Senator Simpson's spokesman Charles Pelkey, when asked about Simpson's galactic origins, told the AP: "We've got only one thing to say: Klaatu barada nikto".[37] This was a quotation from a classic science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), in which an alien arrives by flying saucer in Washington, D.C.

Simpson also played himself in a cameo appearance for the 1993 film Dave.[38]

In December 2012, Simpson filmed a "Gangnam Style" video for a campaign, with a man in a tin can costume. The video, aimed at young people, is called "The Can Kicks Back," a reference to the tendencies of members of Congress to forever "kick the can down the road" in order to avoid making difficult decisions about lowering the national debt. In the video, Simpson admonishes younger Americans to make better use of their social media than "instagramming your breakfast and tweeting your first-world problems." He advises younger people to use their social media skills and resources to rally their friends to join The Can Kicks Back. If younger Americans do not take heed, Simpson says, "These old coots will clean out the Treasury before you get there."[39]

• Right in the Old Gazoo: A Lifetime of Scrapping with the Press. (William Morrow & Company, 1997). ISBN 0-688-11358-3)

In 1998, Simpson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[40] In 2011, Simpson and Erskine Bowles were presented the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government for their work on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.[41] In 2022 Simpson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a ceremony at the White House.

• "Call For Help". This American Life. Chicago. May 9, 2014. WBEZ. Retrieved May 11, 2014. The story of how Simpson acted as relationship counsellor for a constituent.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alan Simpson.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Alan K. Simpson.

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Alan K. Simpson papers at the University of Wyoming - American Heritage Center
• Fix the Debt campaign founded by Pete Peterson
• Alan K. Simpson - Nothing Else Matters Documentary produced by Wyoming PBS
• Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine