DENVER — Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the former senator and U.S. representative of Colorado known for his passionate advocacy of Native American issues, died Tuesday. He was 92.
Campbell died of natural causes surrounded by his family, his daughter, Shanan Campbell, confirmed to The Associated Press.
Campbell, a Democrat who stunned his party by joining the Republican Party, stood out in Congress as much for his unconventional dress — cowboy boots, bolo ties and ponytail — as his defense of children’s rights, organized labor and fiscal conservatism.
A member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe, Campbell said his ancestors were among more than 150 Native Americans, mostly women, children and elderly men, killed by U.S. soldiers while camped under a flag of truce on Nov. 29, 1864. He helped sponsor legislation upgrading the Great Sand Dunes National Monument in southern Colorado, where the massacre happened, to a national park.
He served three terms in the House, starting in 1987. He then served two terms in the Senate, from 1993 to 2005.
“He was a master jeweler with a reputation far beyond the boundaries of Colorado,” said Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper on X. “I will not forget his acts of kindness. He will be sorely missed.”
Campbell was seen as a maverick
The motorcycle-riding lawmaker and cattle rancher was considered a maverick even before he abruptly switched to the Republican Party in March 1995, angry with Democrats for killing a balanced-budget amendment in the Senate. His switch outraged Democratic leaders and was considered a coup for the GOP.
“I get hammered from the extremes,” he said shortly afterward. “I’m always willing to listen ... but I just don’t think you can be all things to all people, no matter which party you’re in.”
Considered a shoo-in for a third Senate term, Campbell stunned supporters when he dropped out of the race in 2004 after a health scare.
“I thought it was a heart attack. It wasn’t,” said Campbell. “But when I was lying on that table in the hospital looking up at all those doctors’ faces, I decided then, ‘Do I really need to do this six more years after I’ve been gone so much from home?’ I have two children I didn’t get to see grow up, quite frankly.”
He retired to focus on the Native American jewelry that helped make him wealthy and was put on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. He also worked on a line of outdoor gear with a California-based company, Kiva Designs, and became a senior policy adviser with the powerhouse law firm of Holland & Knight in Washington.
Campbell founded Ben Nighthorse Consultants which focused on federal policy, including Native American affairs and natural resources. The former senator also drove the Capitol Christmas Tree across the country to Washington, D.C., on several occasions.
“He was truly one of a kind, and I am thinking of his family in the wake of his loss,” said Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette on X.
An accidental politician
In 1982, he was planning to deliver his jewelry to California, but bad weather grounded his plane. He was killing time in the southern Colorado city of Durango when he went to a county Democratic meeting and wound up giving a speech for a friend running for sheriff.
Democrats were looking for someone to challenge a GOP legislative candidate and sounded out Campbell during the meeting. “Like a fish, I was hooked,” he said.
His opponent, Don Whalen, was a popular former college president who “looked like he was out of a Brooks Brothers catalog,” Campbell recalled. “I don’t think anybody gave me any kind of a chance. ... I just think I expended a whole lot of energy to prove them wrong.”
Campbell hit the streets, ripping town maps out of the Yellow Pages and walking door to door to talk with people. He recalled leaving a note at a house in Cortez where no one was home when he heard a car roar into the driveway, gravel flying and brakes squealing.
The driver jumped out, tire iron in hand, and screamed that Campbell couldn’t have his furniture. “Aren’t you the repossession company?” the man asked.
“And I said, ‘No man, I’m just running for office.’ We got to talking, and I think the guy voted for me.”
Campbell went on to win, and he never lost an election thereafter, moving from the Colorado House to the U.S. House and then the Senate.
Born April 13, 1933, in Auburn, California, Campbell served in the Air Force in Korea from 1951 to 1953 and received a bachelor’s degree from San Jose State University in 1957. He attended Meiji University in Tokyo from 1960 to 1964, was captain of the U.S. judo team in the 1964 Olympics and won a gold medal in the Pan American Games.
Campbell once called then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt a “forked-tongued snake” for opposing a water project near the southern Colorado town of Ignacio, which Campbell promoted as a way to honor the water rights of the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes.
He clashed with environmentalists on everything from mining law and grazing reforms to setting aside land for national monuments.
Despite all this — or perhaps because of it — voters loved him. In 1998, Campbell won reelection to the Senate by routing Democrat Dottie Lamm, the wife of former Gov. Dick Lamm, despite his switch to the GOP. He was the only Native American in the Senate at the time.
Campbell insisted his principles didn’t change, only his party
He said he was criticized as a Democrat for voting with Republicans and then pilloried by some newspapers for his stances after the switch.
“It didn’t change me. I didn’t change my voting record. For instance, I had a sterling voting record as a Democrat on labor. I still do as a Republican. And on minorities and women’s issues,” he said.
Campbell said his values — liberal on social issues, conservative on fiscal ones — were shaped by his life. Children’s causes were dear to him because he and his sister spent time in an orphanage when his father was in jail and his mother had tuberculosis.
Organized labor won his backing because hooking up with the Teamsters and learning to drive a truck got him out of the California tomato fields. His time as a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy in California in the late 1960s and early ’70s made him a law enforcement advocate.
His decision to retire from politics, Campbell said, had nothing to do with allegations that Ginnie Kontnik, his former chief of staff, solicited kickbacks from another staffer and that his office lobbied for a contract for a technology company with ties to the former senator.
He referred both matters to the Senate Ethics Committee. In 2007, Kontnik pleaded guilty to a federal charge of not reporting $2,000 in income.
“I guess there was some disappointment” with those charges, Campbell said. “But a lot of things happen in Washington that disappoint you. You just have to get over them because every day there’s a new crisis to deal with.”
