San Luis Valley Farmer-Senator Cleave Simpson Nominated to Lead Colorado Agriculture

Gov.-elect Phil Weiser has nominated Republican Sen. Cleave Simpson, a fourth-generation San Luis Valley farmer and former general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, as Colorado's next commissioner of agriculture. The appointment requires Senate confirmation.

Simpson, of Alamosa, farms with his 83-year-old father, who still runs a cow-calf operation on the family's home place. He sold his own cows when he returned to Texas in 2006.

"I don't own a single cow anymore," Simpson said. "I'm just free labor for my dad, which is fine, and he took care of me for a lot of years."

Why does the nomination matter for water policy?

Simpson built his career on groundwater management in a basin under statutory pressure to cut pumping. He joined the Rio Grande Water Conservation District in January 2014 after leaving Australia's BHP Billiton in December 2013, succeeding retiring manager Steve Vandiver. The district's staff grew from two to 13 employees during that transformation.

"They were tasked with managing groundwater that they had never done before," Simpson said of the district's mandate.

In 2016, his basin roundtable selected him for the Interbasin and Compact Committee. He frames water as the central issue for the state's future.

"Water is just going to be the most significant driver of life in Colorado going forward," Simpson said. "There are 100 legislators. There aren't very many of us that even own a water right, and there are maybe two or three that own a water right and actually use it to produce something."

His legislative work also covered rural health care, schools, higher education and veterans' issues.

How did Simpson and Weiser connect?

The two met roughly a decade ago and co-authored an op-ed around 2022 opposing a San Luis Valley water export scheme. The plan targeted tens of thousands of irrigated acres for buy-up and dry-up, with Douglas County as the intended destination on the Front Range.

The two stayed friends. After Weiser won his primary, he asked Simpson for candidate names for the agriculture post. Simpson eventually put himself forward.

"I didn't have it anywhere on my dance card to be the commissioner of agriculture," he said. "I feel uniquely qualified and it's a little cliche, but I have my hands in the soil. I've raised row crops. I've raised small grains. I've raised forage. I know this business."

What shaped Simpson before public office?

His great-grandfather moved the family from Kansas and bought San Luis Valley farm ground sight unseen, learning quickly that owning land did not mean owning water. That irrigation lesson shaped four generations.

A 1979 all-state basketball player, Simpson planned to attend the Air Force Academy but was disqualified from piloting because of hay fever. The late Jack Cotton, a Denver Nugget in the team's inaugural 1949-50 season, connected him with former Nuggets teammate Jim Darden, then coaching at the Colorado School of Mines. Darden offered a scholarship and kept paying Simpson's tuition after an injury ended his playing career.

"Darden, he kept paying my tuition for me the whole time I was there," Simpson said. "I didn't play the last two years and he kept paying my tuition, so that was pretty generous."

Simpson graduated in four years with a mining engineering degree. He and one of his 12 classmates found industry jobs in the weak 1984 market, both at Texas Utilities Mining Company. He married his high school sweetheart, Cathy, and their son Jared was born in Texas.

His mother died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1993, months after diagnosis, drawing him back to the Valley. He gave up salary and insurance, bought his own farm near Alamosa, and served on the Farm Services Agency county committee. Texas Utilities later rehired him for a growing coal operation, and BHP Billiton recruited him to Queensland's Bowen Basin, where he oversaw the entire operation after Jared finished school. At the end of his second year in Australia, metallurgical coal prices fell from $300 a ton to $100, and the company paid for the family's return.

Among his strongest memories: all four generations of Simpsons branding calves together, his grandfather directing from the truck's passenger seat before his death in 2015. Simpson faces Senate confirmation before taking the commissioner's post.