Ben Nighthorse Campbell: Orphanage Kid, Olympic Judoka, Senate Maverick

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Ben Nighthorse Campbell was born Benny Campbell in 1933 in Auburn, California, to Mary, a Portuguese immigrant whose family came through Ellis Island, and Albert, a World War I veteran of primarily Northern Cheyenne descent. His parents met while both were institutionalized, she for tuberculosis and he for alcoholism, and he and his sister spent long stretches in Catholic orphanages. He dropped out of high school in 1951, served as an air policeman in Korea, earned his GED, graduated from San Jose State in 1957 while training under judo coach Yosh Uchida and spent four years at Meiji University in Tokyo. He won three U.S. national titles and 1963 Pan American gold, and in 1964 became the first Native American on the U.S. Olympic judo team, where an ankle injury ended his medal hopes.

He worked as a Sacramento County deputy sheriff, teacher and judo coach, and won more than 200 awards for jewelry that blended Southwestern techniques with Japanese sword making methods. After moving to a Colorado ranch, he served in the state legislature from 1982 and the U.S. House from 1986, then won a Senate seat in 1992, the first Native American senator since Charles Curtis. In March 1995 he left the Democrats for the Republican Party after the defeat of a balanced budget amendment, and in 1998 he won reelection by what was then the largest statewide margin in Colorado history. He retired in 2005 and died at his Colorado ranch in December 2025 at 92.

• As a boy he flattened silver dollars on train tracks and hammered them into jewelry.
• He authored the 1989 law establishing the National Museum of the American Indian.
• He was the first Native American to chair the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and passed more public laws than any other senator in the 106th Congress.
• In 2004 he was one of six Republicans to vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment, calling marriage a state issue.
• In 2016 he said he regretted his vote to authorize the Iraq War.