Nancy Kassebaum Baker, former U.S. senator from Kansas, died at age 94 of natural causes. According to her son Bill Kassebaum, she was an independent-minded Republican who was willing to challenge her party when she believed it necessary. She represented Kansas for 18 years in the Senate after being elected in 1978.
Kassebaum Baker was the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate without having followed a spouse into office. She won her initial Senate race with less than 31 percent of the GOP primary vote before securing nearly 54 percent of the general election vote against a former two-term Democratic congressman. She achieved significant re-election margins, winning with 76 percent of the vote in 1984 and 74 percent in 1990. When she announced her retirement early in 1997, she was among eight women serving in the Senate and the only woman chairing a Senate committee, the Labor and Human Resources panel.
Kassebaum Baker’s tenure reflected moderate-to-liberal Republican politics consistent with her father, Gov. Alf Landon, a 1936 GOP presidential nominee. She supported a ban on assault weapons championed by President Bill Clinton, a position she said generated the angriest mail of her career. In 1996, she partnered with liberal Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy on health insurance legislation that bore both their names. Her son characterized her as someone who could work across party lines and connect with voters without appearing consumed by the trappings of political power.
After leaving the Senate, Kassebaum Baker continued in public service roles, including work on a bipartisan campaign finance reform commission and a British commission in Africa. She married former Tennessee Senator Howard Baker in 1996, making them the first pair of former senators to wed. She later served as ambassador to Japan from 2001 to 2005 alongside her husband, then ambassador to that country. In her final years, she endorsed Democratic candidates for Kansas offices, including Democratic Governor Laura Kelly in both of her campaigns.
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