Politics runs on reputations, and when you hang around the state Capitol enough you get a feel for the reputations which have been cultivated – intentionally or otherwise – by the various state representatives and senators. There are dealmakers and backbenchers, cynics and wise men, work horses and show horses. And, in one way or another, these reputations impact how they interact with each other, and how laws ultimately get made.
Amid the wide and varied range of reputations on display at the state Capitol, few elected officials can outdo the favorable branding of Senator Cleave Simpson, the Republican manning a 14-county Senate district in the state’s southwest corner: he’s a nice guy, and just about everyone agrees on that front. There are 100 legislators in the state of Colorado, and Simpson is perhaps the only one who all of the others like.
It is regrettable, then, that he is such a bad state Senator – and doubly regrettable that I feel compelled to make the case that the Capitol’s nicest guy simply cannot, in good conscience, be reelected this November.
During his four years in the legislature, the state’s most affable Senator has consistently undermined his own purported priorities, catered to the special interests who have supported his campaigns, and turned his back on some of the most acute risks to life and property endured by his constituents in SD-6. Simpson is up for reelection this November, and – nice as he may be – the residents of his district deserve to know the truth about how he has represented them.
Some of Simpson’s sins are not novel. Like many politicians, Simpson has talked out of both sides of his mouth on important issues. In a Ballotpedia candidate survey he filled out earlier this year, for instance, Simpson listed his top two priorities as access to quality, affordable healthcare and funding for K-12 schools. During his time in the Senate, though, Simpson has been antagonistic to both goals.
Despite rural Colorado’s well-known struggles with school funding and teacher retention, Simpson voted against efforts to shore-up teacher pay in rural districts.
In addition, Simpson consistently and repeatedly votes against efforts to make healthcare more affordable. According to data from the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment (CDPHE), the southwestern corner of Simpson’s district has a diabetes hospitalization rate nearly three times higher than the statewide average. Yet, in 2021, Simpson voted against a measure to cap the price consumers are charged for life-saving insulin.
That same year, Simpson voted against prescription drug affordability measures, and in 2023 he repeated his insulin performance by voting against a measure to cap the price of EpiPens – another life-saving medicine which has been the subject of historic price-gouging in recent years. Unsurprisingly for an elected Republican – however nice, and however much they talk about healthcare access – Simpson has also voted against improved access to contraception.
As an added but surely unrelated note: Simpson’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns received thousands of dollars in contributions from organizations in the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.
But the thing in Simpson’s record which really, truly baffles me is the extreme antipathy towards wildfire prevention and recovery measures exhibited by the man who represents one of Colorado’s most flammable regions – a feat of negligence so disconnected from his constituents’ lived struggles that it alone should be good enough reason to kick Simpson to the curb this November.
Colorado’s flammability is difficult to overstate, and the 14-county region in the state’s southwest corner where Simpson is running for reelection has borne a disproportionate share of the fire burden in recent years. In early June 2018, the 416 and Burro Fires ignited in Las Animas County, just north of Durango. By the time the two fires were fully contained, they had burned 57,000 acres and cost more than $40 million to contain. More than 1,300 homes were evacuated. Later that same month, the Spring Creek Fire erupted in Costilla County, on the district’s eastern edge, rapidly growing into the third-largest fire in state history. It burned until September, consuming more than 108,000 acres, destroying more than 140 buildings. In 2002, the Durango region was engulfed by the Missionary Ridge Fire, which burned 73,000 acres, cost one firefighter his life, and remains the seventh-largest fire in state history. Just within the last month at least half a dozen small fires were reported in his district. Some may still be active.
Despite the pressing risk posed to his constituents by Colorado’s year-round fire season, Simpson has actively worked against wildfire prevention and recovery legislation in the state Senate. In 2023, Simpson voted against a bill to modernize the state’s fire prevention and control codes and standards. The bill focused on the hardening of structures and the reduction of fire risk in urban-wildland interface areas, where the risk from wildfires to people and property is most acute. In other words, it was a bill designed to reduce the risk wildfires pose to life and livelihood, and Cleave Simpson opposed it.
Earlier this year, Simpson voted against yet another bill to mitigate the risks posed by wildfires, this time by continuing and improving the forest service’s wildfire outreach and notification campaigns. He has even voted against wildfire investigations, despite a large number of wildfires resulting from arson – including the Spring Creek Fire which devastated the heart of Simpson’s district just six years ago.
Thankfully, all three bills passed with bipartisan support and were signed into law despite Simpson’s unwillingness to support them.
I’m not saying that Cleave Simpson is a bad guy. I don’t know if it’s that simple. There are good, effective legislators who represent their constituents ably while being terrible people who treat their staff and coworkers like garbage. Cleave Simpson is the opposite: a nice guy who treats the people around him well, who has a reputation for affability, and whose term in office has been an enormous disservice to the voters who sent him there.
I go back and forth on which of these two kinds of legislators I prefer. I co-founded the Political Workers Guild of Colorado almost entirely because of the first kind – the kind who staff needs to be protected from – and am rarely going to be the first to excuse their poor behavior in favor of their adequate results. Nor do I find it easy to excuse Cleave Simpson’s poor results in favor of his good behavior. Legislators’ behavior matters – and so do the results they achieve. Or fail to achieve. Or actively work against.
On an interpersonal level, I would rather hang out with Cleave Simpson than with a number of legislative Democrats. But casting a vote based on who you’d rather have a beer with is a silly idea, and Simpson’s congeniality does not offset the consequences of how he has governed.
This November, the voters of SD-6 – the voters of Montrose, Ouray, San Miguel, Dolores, San Juan, Montezuma, La Plata, Archuleta, Saguache, Rio Grande, Alamosa, Conejos, and Costilla Counties – should consider a change. They should consider Vivian Smotherman, Simpson’s rival for the General Election. She has been a farmer and a teacher, and she’s offering the people of southwest Colorado an opportunity for the representation they have been missing for the last four years: someone who will work against wildfire, not for it, who will actually fight for education funding and healthcare access.
Keep Cleave Simpson home – not because he’s a bad guy, but because he’s a bad Senator. Because the people of SD-6 deserve better. And because he’ll be easier to grab a beer with if he’s not in Denver.
