Alan K. Simpson, an obviously spoken former Republican senator from Wyoming, passed away Friday in Cody, Wyoming, defending a conservative Supreme Court candidate while fighting a fight against women's groups, environmentalists and the media.
He was struggling to recover from the broken hips that lasted in December, according to a statement from his family and the Western Buffalo Bill Center, a museum group that he had been a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery was hampered by complications of a case of frostbite on his left leg, which he endured about five years ago, and that it was hampered by requiring an amputation of his left leg below the knee.
A fork with the soft drawl of the ranch's hands, a 6-foot-7 bean pole, a fork, and sometimes ga-risking, 6-foot-7 bean pole, Simpson was the third year senator from 1979 to 1997. Environmental lobbyist.
Simpson, the son of a former governor of Wyoming and the United States Senator, was a teenager in hell. He and several friends shot the mailbox, killed the cow with their rifles, setting fire to abandoned federal property. He punched the police officer who arrested him. No one was seriously injured, but he faced prison. However, he was on probation for two years and was paid compensation.
“I was a monster,” he admitted in the U.S. Supreme Court summary at the 2009 Court of Court of To Court brief, suing the second chance he was given 60 years ago for two boys accused of crimes 60 years ago. With the help of a probation officer, he said he redeemed his life.
Simpson holds an undergraduate and law degree from the University of Wyoming, has served in the US military for two years, Cody's city attorney, entered politics and served in the state legislature for 13 years before his father was once elected to the Senate seat. Among his best friends were Dick Cheney and President George HW Bush, whom he considered to be his vice president's running companion in 1988 (Bush chose Senator Dan Keel of Indiana instead).
Simpson had a love-hate relationship with the media. Many journalists liked his simple humor and easy accessibility. However, when his language attacks the news media, his tone is crude and his tone may be lightly empty. He crossed the line when he accused CNN of Peter Arnett of being the “sympathizer” of the enemy of reports from Iraq during the Persian Gulf War and accused him of mistakenly accusing him of marrying a Vietnamese woman in the Vietnam War.
His political status sometimes seemed contradictory. He supported abortion rights and Roev. Right-wing candidate to the US Supreme Court who could overturn Wade. And from some of the friendships he forged when he was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, he called on the public to apologise to Japanese Americans who had interns during World War II as a potential security risk.
But he was funny and unpredictable.
“Simpson turned out to be one of the most refreshing breezes that will pass through the dignity of Congress and the Fustians and remind you that everything will not be lost,” the Washington Post reported shortly after its arrival in Washington. The senator said that he would answer his phone from time to time, and once the caller asked, “Where is that slender bastard?” He replied, “speak.”
In the early 1980s, Senator Simpson sponsored a bill that would strengthen border control and reduce the influx of illegal immigrants. It was against the law for undocumented aliens to work in the United States, but hiring them was not illegal, so Sen. Simpson and New Jersey Democrat Peter Rodino proposed a bill that would punish employers who hired illegal immigrants and provided legal status to many people who already live in the country.
The Senate passed immigration bills in 1982, 1983 and 1985. The house passed one in 1984. However, the two rooms did not resolve the difference. Until 1986, both homes passed the Immigration Reform Act sponsored by Senator Simpson and Kentucky Democrat Romano L. Mazzoli. It was signed to the law by President Ronald Reagan.
The measure required employers to prove the status of their employees' immigration, made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants, legalized undocumented seasonal agricultural immigration, legalized undocumented aliens who had entered the country before 1982 and were residing on a continuous basis, and then continued residing.
Some experts call it a management nightmare. The reforms, later sponsored by Simpson and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Democrat of Massachusetts, led to the acceptance of more skilled and educated immigrants. However, until after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the sharp rise in illegal immigration continued, leading to more robust border enforcement and sweeping national security measures.
In addition to supporting abortion rights, Simpson voted against the ban on late abortions, but opposed federal funding for abortion, except to save women's lives, or in the event that pregnancy arises from incest or rape. However, he gave the Supreme Court the rage of women and civil rights groups during hearings over the nominations of judges Robert H. Bolk, David Starr and Clarence Thomas.
He supported all three and joined the unanimous confirmation of Sandra Deio Connor in 1981, Antonin Scalia in 1986 and Anthony Kennedy in 1988.
In 1987, Simpson was one of the most powerful supporters of Judge Bolk of the Judiciary Committee, and the belief that the constitution should be interpreted in accordance with the intentions of the original founder was seen as a signal by a group of women to vote in the Supreme Court to reverse the 1973 landmark decision.
Senator Kennedy's speech, “Robert Bolk's America,” provided a series of negative images, including “a land where women are forced into abortions in alleys,” and was rejected by Judge Bolk's supporters as a illicit task. However, fearing he would cut the resolved rights of blacks and women, he created public protests, and the Senate rejected his nominations from 58 to 42.
In 1990, Simpson once again became the gre of the women's group at a hearing about Judge Star, the candidate for President Bush on the New Hampshire Supreme Court. The National Women's Agency and the NAACP were vehemently opposed his appointment. Simpson called the group so closed that “we couldn't change if we were to flock them to the cliffs at Buffalo Romp.” Judge Souter was confirmed 90-9.
Senator Simpson's position with the woman received another hit in 1991 when he defended President Bush's candidate, Judge Thomas, who joined in the fightback against Anita Hill, and the judge testified that he had sexually harassed her in two government agencies. Simpson wielded a bunch of what he called a dim-like correspondence about Hill.
He read one statement aloud from the prosecutor suggesting that Hill could be paranoid, but refused to publish any of the letters. Women and civil rights groups were furious, but Judge Thomas confirmed between 52 and 48 people.
In a 2018 phone interview from Cody in this obituary, Roev, considering Simpson was generally supportive of offering women's choices regarding abortion. He was asked why he supported a Supreme Court candidate who may have voted against Wade.
“I didn't care about it,” he replied. “I knew these people. I wasn't thinking about nuances. I wanted people in court, regardless of ideology. I wanted a trustworthy civil servant with a brain.”
Simpson did not seek re-election in 1996. A few months after leaving the Senate, he published his memoir, “The Right of the Old Gazoo: A Life of Disposal with the Press.” In a review in The New York Times, David Gergen said he justified that Simpson was often portrayed in harsh caricatures by the press.
“Alan Simpson was a much more valuable civil servant than his critics would acknowledge,” Gergen wrote. “He worked effectively and created a bipartisan coalition that moved important laws through Congress. His personal friendship and humor were part of the glue that kept the place together. And unlike most of his critics, he owned it to mistake.”
Looking back at his Senate career in an obituary interview, Simpson said: Humor really saved my ass. ” He then added, referring to Anne Simpson, who had been listening to his wife, Anne Simpson: She knows when I'm about to step into it. ”
Alan Cooey Simpson was born in Denver on September 2, 1931. His father was Governor of Wyoming from 1955 to 1959 and was a US Senator from 1962 to 1967.
As a Boy Scout in 1943, Alan visited a Japanese-American scout whose family had interned near Ralston, Wyoming during World War II. Alan met 12-year-old Norman Y. Mineta in the back, carrying 13,000 people, mostly women and children. A few years later, their friendship was renewed as Mineta became Democrat and Secretary of Transport under President George W. Bush.
Simpson's older brother, Peter K. Simpson, became a historian, administrator and professor at the University of Wyoming, a state legislator from 1981 to 1984 and a 1986 state legislator candidate.
After his teenage law, Alan graduated from Cody High School in 1949 and from the University of Wyoming Laramie University in 1954.
That year he married college lover Anne Schlor. They had three children: William, Colin and Susan. Colin and Peter Simpson are one of his survivors. Full information about the survivors was not immediately available.
Simpson was in the Army from 1955-56 and graduated from law school in 1958. He joined the law firm, where he was Cody's city attorney for 10 years and was a Wyoming legislator from 1964 to 1977.
From 1997 to 2000, Simpson taught at the John F. Kennedy Government School at Harvard University, then returned to Wyoming to practice law.
In 2010, President Barack Obama named him and former Chief of Staff Elskin Bowles, President Bill Clinton, co-chairs of an independent, bipartisan committee that proposed $4 trillion in spending cuts and tax increases to address the rising federal deficit. Obama did not support the recommendations, but adopted most of them in his own 10-year deficit cut plan.
Simpson has been a longtime supporter of gay rights, including same-sex marriage. He then amended the constitution and unified citizens. The Federal Election Commission proposed to overturn the 2010 Supreme Court decision, banning the restrictions on political campaign spending by businesses, trade unions and other groups under the First Amendment's Free Statement Guarantee.
Simpson recalls that they met in 1962, when his father was a Senator, following the funeral tribute of George H.W. Bush in Washington in 2018. After that, they remained close friends.
“The most decent and honorable person I've ever met was my friend George Bush,” Simpson said. “One of the nobles of nature. His inscription, perhaps a single letter, a letter “L” for loyalty. It went through his blood. He was a loyalty to his country, his family, his loyalty to his friends, his loyalty to government agencies, and always, always, always, friends of his friends. ”
