Alan Simpson

Early life

Simpson was born in Denver, Colorado, on September 2, 1931, the son of Milward Simpson and the former Lorna Kooi. His middle name, Kooi, comes from his maternal grandfather, whose parents were Dutch immigrants. Simpson had an older brother, Pete Simpson, a historian and former administrator at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming, who served in the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1981 to 1984, having represented Sheridan County, Wyoming, 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.

Simpson had several run-ins with the law during his youth, later remarking, "I was just dumb and rebellious and stupid. And a different person," adding that "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." For the 2010 Supreme Court of the United States case Graham v. Florida on the constitutionality of sentencing juveniles to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses, Simpson submitted an amicus curiae brief explaining his own troubled youth:

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

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 from the University of Wyoming with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1954. Like his brother, he was a member of the university's Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. Simpson served in the United States Army in Germany from 1955 to 1956 with the 10th Infantry Regiment of the 5th Infantry Division and the 12th Armored Infantry Battalion of the 2nd Armored Division.

United States Senator

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 Hansen, former Governor of Wyoming from 1963 to 1967 who had succeeded Milward Simpson, Alan's father who was Governor of Wyoming from 1955 to 1959, in the seat. From 1985 to 1995, Simpson was the Republican whip, assisting Republican leader of the United States Senate Bob Dole from Kansas. He was chairman of the Senate 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, Nuclear Regulation Subcommittee, Social Security Subcommittee, and Committee on Aging.

Simpson was characterized as a moderate conservative by The New York Times upon his death in 2025. Contemporaneously he was known as a hardline conservative who was loyal to Ronald Reagan's policies. He supported the abortion-rights movement and in 1995 and 1996, he voted against a ban of late-term abortions that only exempted life-threatening conditions, rather than all physical health needs. However, he opposed federal funding for abortions by supporting the Hyde Amendment. In 2013, Simpson stating that abortion should not be a political issue in a party that believes in "government out of our lives," "the right to be left alone," and "the precious right of privacy".

In the early 1980s, illegal immigrants were prohibited from working in the United States, but employers were not penalized for hiring them as unreported employment. Alongside Democratic Party United States House of Representatives member Peter W. Rodino from New Jersey, Simpson was the main force behind the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which included a provision prohibiting the intentional hiring of illegal immigrants, while providing legal status to those that arrived before 1982.

As a ranking minority member of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Affairs in 1987, he drew criticism for calling Hmong who had fought for the United States fleeing to the US in the aftermath of the Vietnam War "the most indigestible group in society" for their perceived inability to adhere to white American norms, which Hmong American scholar Kou Yang said was at the time the "worst of all" comments on Hmong. Rubén G. Rumbaut highlighted the irony of Simpson's derogatory characterization of Hmong in a 1999 study that showed that Hmong students in San Diego schools "outperform[ed] all native-born English-only American students". Reflecting on his work for the American Sociological Association's Contexts, Rambaut said, "One thing I know is that popular conceptions about immigrants and their assimilation don’t square with the facts." Rambaut saw Simpson's use of the word "indigestible" as indicative that Simpson was imagining an assimilation where Hmong were absorbed into the more desirable Anglo-Saxon race. Natsu Taylor Saito concurred: "[Simpson thinks] they [Hmong] should be fully 'digestible'; their purpose is to nourish settler society, not to change it." Dwight Conquergood remarked Simpson's comments were typical of Western visitors to the largest Hmong refugee camp in Thailand, the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. "Instead of seeing the Hmong as struggling within a constraining context of historical, political, and economic forces that have reduced them from proud, independent, mountain people to landless refugees, the Hmong are blamed for their miserable condition." Shelly R. Adler likened Simpson's comments to an article in The New York Times that asserted the Hmong were “the most primitive refugee group in America"—to which Paul Pao Herr, a Hmong reader of the paper responded, "[E]vidently we were not too primitive to fight as proxies for the United States troops in the war in Laos". In the most widely read book on Hmong people The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which chronicles a Hmong family's struggles with the US healthcare system, Anne Fadiman draws a parallel between Simpson and the historical Chinese government, which also sought to assimilate the Hmong ethnic minority among them. "...[Simpson] sounded much like the authorities in China long ago who were grievously insulted when the Hmong refused to speak Chinese or eat with chopsticks." Simpson visited Ban Vinai for one day during his tenure on the immigration subcommittee.

Post-Senate career

In 1995, he lost the position of Republican whip to U.S. Senate member Trent Lott from Mississippi, and he did not seek reelection to the Senate in 1996. From 1997 to 2000, Simpson taught at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University's Harvard Kennedy School 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 hometown of Cody and practiced law there with his two sons (William and Colin) in the firm of Simpson, Kepler and Edwards. The three were also partners in the firm of Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine in 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 its Speaker from 2008 to March 2010. Colin Simpson finished fourth in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary election.

Simpson periodically taught at his alma mater, the University of Wyoming, with his brother Pete. From 2001 to 2005, he served as chairman of the UW Campaign for Distinction, which raised $204 million.

In 2018, Simpson was chosen as one of four speakers to eulogize President George H.W. Bush at his state funeral.

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

Iraq Study Group

In 2006, Simpson was one of ten (five Democratic and five Republican) contributors to the Iraq Study Group Report.

National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

In 2010, Simpson was appointed to co-chair President Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Erskine Bowles. Simpson extensively spoke about the burden being placed on future generations by the structure of current entitlement programs. In a 2012 opinion piece, journalist Matthew Miller recounted that as a senator, Simpson advised the nation's youth to collectively advocate for government reforms through an interest group. He continued to advocate for fiscal responsibility as a board member of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and founder of the Campaign to Fix the Debt.

Campaign finance reform

Simpson was a strong critic of the US Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, calling for an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in the case. In an interview with Wyoming Public Radio, Simpson said: "I think most Americans would like to see reasonable limits on campaign spending." In 2016, he joined the advisory board of American Promise, a national, cross-partisan organization that advocates for a 28th Amendment to the US Constitution that would allow Congress and state governments to set limits on campaign finance in U.S. elections.

LGBTQ rights

Simpson supported LGBTQ rights throughout his life. In 2001, Simpson became Honorary Chairman of the Republican Unity Coalition (RUC), a gay/straight alliance within the Republican Party. In that capacity, Simpson recruited former President Gerald Ford to serve on the RUC advisory board. In a 2007 Washington Post article, Simpson criticized the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, stating that "'Gay' is an artificial category that says little about a person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge." The policy was ultimately ended in 2011.

Civic participation

Simpson was on the board of directors at the National Institute for Civil Discourse (NICD). The institute was created at the University of Arizona after the shooting of U.S House of Representatives member Gabby Giffords from Arizona. He was an honorary board member of the humanitarian organization Wings of Hope and co-chair of the advisory board of Issue One, a nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce the role of money in politics.

Personal life and death

In 1954, Simpson married the former Susan Ann Schroll, who he had met while studying at the University of Wyoming. Together, they had three children named William Simpson, Colin M. Simpson, and Susan Gallagher.

Simpson's health declined after contracting frostbite in his late eighties, which led to the amputation of his lower left leg and foot. In December 2024, he had broken a hip and never fully recovered, which led to his death under hospice care in Cody, Wyoming, on March 14, 2025 at age 93.

In popular culture

The June 7, 1994, edition of the supermarket tabloid Weekly World News reported that twelve senators were aliens of extraterrestrial life 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," quoting the science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), in which an alien arrives in Washington, D.C. by flying saucer.

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 Congress to "kick the can down the road" instead of making difficult decisions about lowering the government 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 advised, "These old coots will clean out the Treasury before you get there."

Recognition

In 1998, Simpson received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. 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. In 2022 Simpson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in a ceremony at the White House.

Works

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