Ben Nighthorse Campbell, former U.S. senator from Colorado and Northern Cheyenne tribe member, dies at 92

Former Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Northern Cheyenne tribal chief who turned a distinguished American politician, has died. He was 92.

His daughter Shanan Campbell confirmed to CBS Information that her father died Tuesday at his residence on a ranch in southwestern Colorado surrounded by members of the family.  

Campbell served in Colorado’s congressional delegation throughout three completely different a long time. He began out as a member of the Democratic Celebration and was elected to the U.S. Home of Representatives within the Nineteen Eighties. Within the mid-Nineties, three years after his election to the U.S. Senate, he determined to depart the Democrats and swap to the Republican Celebration. He served two phrases as senator after which retired within the 2000s due to what he mentioned have been considerations about his well being.

“I believed it was a coronary heart assault. It wasn’t,” Campbell mentioned on the time. “However once I was mendacity on that desk within the hospital trying up in any respect these docs’ faces, I made a decision then, ‘Do I actually need to do that six extra years after I have been gone a lot from residence?’ I’ve two kids I did not get to see develop up, fairly frankly.”  

Campbell was identified for his advocacy of Native American points. He mentioned his ancestors have been amongst greater than 150 Native Individuals, largely ladies, kids and aged males, killed by U.S. troopers whereas camped underneath a flag of truce on Nov. 29, 1864. He helped sponsor laws upgrading the Nice Sand Dunes Nationwide Monument in southern Colorado, the place the bloodbath occurred, to a nationwide park.

His abrupt choice to change events in 1995 surprised Democratic leaders in addition to his Colorado constituents. He was offended with Democrats on the time for killing a balanced-budget modification within the Senate.

“It did not change me. I did not change my voting report. As an example, I had a sterling voting report as a Democrat on labor. I nonetheless do as a Republican. And on minorities and girls’s points,” he mentioned.  

After he retired, he targeted partly on the Native American jewellery that helped make him rich and was placed on show on the Smithsonian Establishment’s Nationwide Museum of the American Indian. He additionally based Ben Nighthorse Consultants which targeted on federal coverage, together with Native American affairs and pure assets.

Sen. John Hickenlooper, Colorado’s junior U.S. senator, was amongst those that shared remembrances of Campbell after studying the information.

“He was a grasp jeweler with a fame far past the boundaries of Colorado. I cannot neglect his acts of kindness. He can be sorely missed,” Hickenlooper mentioned on X.

Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, mentioned on X: “He was really one in every of a form, and I’m considering of his household within the wake of his loss.”

Shanan Campbell confirmed that Cambell’s spouse “of virtually 60 years,” Linda Campbell, was amongst those that have been with him when he died.

Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican who represents Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, wrote on X: “Colorado misplaced a real legend in former U.S. Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell. A proud Northern Cheyenne, Olympian, veteran, and trailblazing chief who championed our nice state.” She mentioned that he and Linda “have been pioneers for Colorado and constructed a legacy of energy, service, and innovation that may encourage generations to return.”

Campbell by no means misplaced an election

In 1982, Campbell was planning to ship his jewellery to California, however unhealthy climate grounded his aircraft. He was killing time within the southern Colorado metropolis of Durango when he went to a county Democratic assembly and wound up giving a speech for a good friend working for sheriff.

Democrats have been in search of somebody to problem a GOP legislative candidate and sounded out Campbell in the course of the assembly. “Like a fish, I used to be hooked,” he mentioned.

His opponent, Don Whalen, was a preferred former school president who “seemed like he was out of a Brooks Brothers catalog,” Campbell recalled. “I do not assume anyone gave me any form of an opportunity. … I simply assume I expended an entire lot of vitality to show them unsuitable.”

Campbell hit the streets, ripping city maps out of the Yellow Pages and strolling door to door to speak with individuals. He recalled leaving a notice at a home in Cortez the place nobody was residence when he heard a automobile roar into the driveway, gravel flying and brakes squealing.

The motive force jumped out, tire iron in hand, and screamed that Campbell could not have his furnishings. “Aren’t you the repossession firm?” the person requested.

“And I mentioned, ‘No man, I am simply working for workplace.’ We acquired to speaking, and I believe the man voted for me.”

Campbell went on to win and he by no means misplaced an election thereafter, transferring from the Colorado Home to 3 phrases within the U.S. Home after which to the Senate.

Born April 13, 1933, in Auburn, California, Campbell served within the Air Pressure in Korea from 1951 to 1953 and obtained a bachelor’s diploma from San Jose State College in 1957. He attended Meiji College in Tokyo from 1960 to 1964, was captain of the U.S. judo workforce within the 1964 Olympics and gained a gold medal within the Pan American Video games.

Campbell as soon as known as then-Inside Secretary Bruce Babbitt a “forked-tongued snake” for opposing a water venture close to the southern Colorado city of Ignacio, which Campbell promoted as a strategy to honor the water rights of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes.

He clashed with environmentalists on every part from mining legislation and grazing reforms to setting apart land for nationwide monuments.

Regardless of all this — or maybe due to it — voters cherished him. In 1998, Campbell gained reelection to the Senate by routing Democrat Dottie Lamm, the spouse of former Gov. Dick Lamm, regardless of his swap to the GOP. He was the one Native American within the Senate on the time.

Campbell mentioned his values — liberal on social points, conservative on fiscal ones — have been formed by his life. Youngsters’s causes have been expensive to him as a result of he and his sister frolicked in an orphanage when his father was in jail and his mom had tuberculosis.

Organized labor gained his backing as a result of hooking up with the Teamsters and studying to drive a truck acquired him out of the California tomato fields. His time as a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy in California within the late Nineteen Sixties and early ’70s made him a legislation enforcement advocate.

His choice to retire from politics, Campbell mentioned, had nothing to do with allegations that Ginnie Kontnik, his former chief of workers, solicited kickbacks from one other staffer and that his workplace lobbied for a contract for a know-how firm with ties to the previous senator.

He referred each issues to the Senate Ethics Committee. In 2007, Kontnik pleaded responsible to a federal cost of not reporting $2,000 in earnings.

“I assume there was some disappointment” with these expenses, Campbell mentioned. “However quite a lot of issues occur in Washington that disappoint you. You simply must recover from them as a result of on daily basis there is a new disaster to take care of.”