While from different parties, Shaheen and Simpson, will be remembered for their statesmanship

Two United States senators made news in the same week in March. Jeanne Shaheen, the senior senator from New Hampshire, and Alan Simpson, retired senator from Wyoming, were in the news as she announced she was not running for another term, and he died. Both are significant for the same reason, even thought they were very different.

Shaheen came to New Hampshire from the mid-South when she met Bill Shaheen, from New Hampshire, when he was in law school in Mississippi. He set up a law practice in his native state, and she was an educator.

After starting their family on the Seacoast, they supported a long-shot governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who was running for president in 1976. When Carter won, Bill Shaheen became the U.S. Attorney for New Hampshire. Jeanne eventually ran for the New Hampshire Senate from the seat in Madbury and Dover. She soon established a reputation as a serious legislator.

This writer, then doing lobbying for a number of clients, encountered state Sen. Shaheen when she was author of a bill he was concerned about. The technical provisions of the bill, not its intent, was at issue.

What is significant is what she said to the chairman of the committee in testimony about the bill.

“Mr. Cook has issues with my bill, so please fix it as he says,” she testified. Of course, had we differed on the basic purpose of the bill or its philosophy, we could not have reached agreement, but her willingness to make sure her idea was put into law in an effective way had a lasting effect on me.

When she was elected as New Hampshire’s first female governor, she similarly was serious, centrist and fair. Her support of education, the environment and New Hampshire values made her a very good governor. At the end of her third term, she ran for the U.S. Senate, only to be defeated by John E. Sununu.

Coming back to run against Sununu, she defeated him in 2008. She was reelected in 2014 and 2020. Most pundits expected her to run again in 2026, but her recent announcement that she is not seeking reelection shows typical practicality. Had she run, she would be in her mid-eighties at the end of her next term, with the obvious issues attendant to such age, and the effect on her family.

Some politicians serve and leave office and are remembered as having served. The significant ones are remembered as having had gravitas and are recognized as statespersons. In New Hampshire’s recent history, governors like Walter Peterson, John Sununu and Jeanne Shaheen stand out. Among our U.S. senators, Norris Cotton, Warren Rudman, Judd Gregg and Jeanne Shaheen stand out to me as statespeople. Shaheen has been among those who were listened to in Washington, and among those in a group willing to reach across the aisle to seek consensus, at least prior to the present year of abnormal circumstances.

She will be remembered as having contributed greatly to our state and nation.

Alan Simpson was a character, a conservative, but not a senator who could be fit into a mold. Coming from Wyoming, his image was as a gun-toting Republican who was in Washington to make trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In his tenure, Simpson became known as a very serious, and very droll, statesman. His wisdom led him to leadership, and his ability to reach across the aisle was a product of his winning personality as a good friend.

After he retired from the Senate, Simpson co-chaired the Simpson-Bowles budget balancing committee, a direct descendant of the efforts of New Hampshire’s Warren Rudman to get federal spending under control.

At a luncheon at Manchester’s Center of New Hampshire, I had the opportunity to sit next to Simpson at a fundraiser for some politician. Simpson, then on the faculty of the Kennedy School at Harvard, had come to Manchester. I was captivated by his humor, but more impressed as he recounted the collection of the Currier Museum of Art, and explained how his hobby was to visit fine art museums wherever he went, as that was his interest.

The other time I experienced Simpson in person was at Sen. Rudman’s memorial service at the U.S. Capitol. Held in the Kennedy Conference Room where Rudman had been vice chairman of the Iran/Contra Committee, many of Sen. Rudman’s former colleagues paid tribute to him.

Simpson had been in Wyoming, and had to take several planes, and encounter many delays, in getting to the Capitol. Pulling his own suitcase behind him, he arrived at the event after it began. When he got up to speak, he said, “I wanted to get here to honor Warren the worst way, and I did!” Which, of course, brought down the house. He also was eloquent in his remarks about his friend and our former senator.

Two significant senators, Shaheen and Simpson. We owe them.

Brad Cook is a Manchester attorney. The views expressed in this column are his own. He can be reached at bradfordcook01@gmail.com.