To have known Ben Nighthorse Campbell was to like him. He had a knack for putting people at ease, making them look forward to another meeting. I certainly felt that way. It wasn’t just his humor or his mesmerizing intensity, but his lack of pretense. Ben decided to be himself long before he became a United States senator. There was also an element of perpetual astonishment, I suspect, that he found himself serving in high public office and treated with genuine respect by the nation’s movers and shakers. The walls in his Senate office were filled with photos of Ben meeting everyone from the Pope to Magic Johnson, which he displayed not so much to impress his visitors but as reminders of how far he’d come from an orphanage in California’s central valley.

Throughout, his office was furnished with lodgepole chairs and sofas his son, Colin, crafted back in Ignacio. There were Navajo rugs on the floors and Native American art pieces. If you didn’t glance out the window, it felt more like a cozy adobe in southwest Colorado than a center of political power. Ben may have been a Korean War veteran, a proud American Olympian and an elected legislator, but he was also a motorcycle-riding, ponytailed renegade who won fame and fortune as a distinctive Native American jewelry designer. I was departing the Colorado House as he arrived in 1983. The story of his nomination as a candidate at a Democratic Assembly in Durango evolved as Ben repeated it over the years.

I like the version I first heard from him when we met in Colorado’s Capitol in 1983. He was apparently invited to attend the Assembly on behalf of a friend running for sheriff but since he was there, he decided to visit his legislative House District meeting where Democrats were searching for a candidate to challenge the Republican incumbent. As Ben told me, “No one seemed to want the job, although delegates acted excited to have someone attending from Ignacio. I took advantage of a recess to use the restroom and when I returned, I discovered I’d been nominated.” With a wink he added, “That’s the trouble with Democrats, Miller. You leave to take a leak and return to discover they’ve developed expectations for you.” There was a kernel of truth wrapped in this quip which foretold his decision to switch parties a dozen years later. He would never lose an election, twice winning his seat in the legislature, then three terms in Congress followed by two six-year terms in the U.S., Senate — the last as a Republican in 1998.

Wearing his own stunning bolos, Campbell was able to force changes to the “tie rule” for men at the legislature and later in Congress and then the Senate. I wonder what he would have had to say about John Fetterman’s hoodies, however. Ben may have been a rancher at heart, but he was a natty dresser.  When Gary Hart’s presidential campaign collapsed in 1988 following the Monkey Business scandal, I ran into Ben in Vail one afternoon and he grumbled about the fact he’d cast 50 silver belt buckles for the Hart fundraising team the week before. “What the hell am I going to do with the damned things now?” he exclaimed. Apparently, he must have delivered them anyway as I recently googled a Federal Election Commission (FEC) letter permitting the “Friends of Gary Hart” to disperse 40 buckles to non-political, non-profits for fundraising auctions and distribute 10 to departing staff as they closed their offices. If you ever wonder about bureaucracy, the FEC decision requires four pages of single-spaced explication to approve the campaign request. I imagine the collector’s market would ask a pretty penny for just one buckle today.

When Ben ran for Congress in 1986, he once again grabbed a formerly Republican seat. While he considered running for the Senate in 1990, it became apparent there would be a handful of candidates in the Democratic primary. Ben felt the race would be tough enough without an intramural slugfest and decided to wait for 1992 when another seat would be open. He faced Republican state Sen. Terry Considine who was a moderate Republican I had worked with on Regional Transportation District issues a decade earlier. Terry called me to ask if I would join a “Democrats for Considine” committee. I assured Terry I believed he would make a great Senator, but I would have to pass. I warned him, “Terry, Colorado voters have decided they want to send an Indian to the U S. Senate and there is nothing you can do to stop them.” He would laugh later and tell me, “I should have listened to you. It would have saved me a lot of money.” It was hard to beat a guy whose campaign commercials showed him carrying the American flag at the front of the 1964 U.S. Olympic team in Tokyo.

Sometime during the 1990s, a group of adolescent thugs decided to try and mug Ben as he returned to his Capitol Hill lodgings in Washington. The gray hair and ponytail may have looked like an aging hippie. Bad idea, though. Ben may have been in his early 60s, but he had also once been ranked the No. 4 judo wrestler in the world! After thrashing a pair who had run off, he held their companion for police.

Much has been speculated about Ben’s party switch, but I take him at his word. Republican Scott McInnis, who filled Ben’s congressional seat, often commuted back to the Western Slope with him and certainly played a recruitment role. But Ben had begun to feel he enjoyed better support for Native American concerns on the other side of the aisle. His switch certainly enabled him to successfully cultivate support for authorizing the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian.

I close with a personal story. As a longtime resident on the Western slope, Ben was fully aware of the need for a fast, rail transit link from Denver to the state’s central mountain resorts and then on to Grand Junction. I was the newly appointed manager of the Colorado Intermountain Fixed Guideway Authority (CIFGA) in 1999 when Gov. Bill Owens publicly declared his conviction “every dime spent on transit was a wasted dime.” We had zero chance of securing state funds so I called up Ben who had been given a seat on the Senate Appropriations Committee as a reward for his party switch. A reasonably private person, Ben hadn’t anticipated the trail of petitioners who would be knocking on his door for budget favors.

After commiserating with him, he agreed to try and find me $3 million to $4 million for a feasibility study. This all occurred during the age of earmarks when congressional “appropriators” could steer federal dollars to pet projects. A few months later my phone rang at home after 11 p.m. — meaning Ben was calling me after one in the morning in D.C. I don’t wish to jump to conclusions, but he called from a very noisy place, likely a bar. He informed me, “I’ve found you three-and-a-half million for your monorail study, but I have to ask a favor in return.” “Of course, what is it?”, I replied. “Don’t run around Denver thanking me. No press conferences. No press releases. If reporters ask, tell them you’re happy and surprised the Department of Transportation found merit in your application. Can you do that for me?” I assured him we appreciated his help but inquired what the reason for media silence was. He replied, “I’m already in trouble with the Governor over several of his budget requests, so I need plausible deniability on this one. We’ll apologize that we let it slip past us.”

Beneath his good old boy veneer was a shrewd politician. Rest in peace, Ben. I can only pray the current crop of Republicans in the Senate rediscover his subtle independence.

Miller Hudson is a public affairs consultant and a former Colorado legislator.