Alan Simpson, an outspoken Wyoming Republican who carved a moderate path in the US Senate, dies

Alan Simpson, a longtime Republican senator from Wyoming who championed bipartisan solutions and steadfastly advocated for a moderate blend of conservatism, has died. He was 93.

Alan Simpson, a longtime Republican senator from Wyoming who championed bipartisan solutions and steadfastly advocated for a moderate blend of conservatism, has died. He was 93. Simpson died early Friday after struggling to recover from a broken hip in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West provided to The Associated Press. Simpson, a man of blunt rhetoric whose towering 6-foot-7 stature made him an instantly recognizable figure on Capitol Hill, made a career of taking on difficult congressional assignments, bringing his signature candor to epic legislative battles. During the 1980s, Simpson was at the heart of seminal debates over environmental protection, nuclear regulation, and care for veterans – always injecting a healthy dose of humor to his work. ”In your country club, your church and business, about 15% of the people are screwballs, lightweights and boobs, and you would not want those people unrepresented in Congress,” he once said. Simpson largely aligned with his party on key votes and championed GOP prescriptions for social welfare rollbacks, immigration and foreign policy. But he wasn’t afraid to cross party lines on pressing issues, as he supported abortion rights and was an early GOP advocate for same-sex marriage. “I’ve worked very closely with the gay-lesbian community; we’re all human beings, for God’s sake,” he said in 2008. Simpson’s support for same-sex marriage was especially apparent in a contentious interview with comedian Bill Maher in 2004 after Maher quipped that he’d apologize to “the two gay people in Wyoming” for a joke about gay Republican lawmakers.