Former Kansas Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker dies at 94

Nancy Kassebaum Baker, the former Kansas senator who became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate without succeeding a spouse, has died. She was 94.

Her son, Bill Kassebaum, said she died Friday. The Associated Press, cited by The Guardian, reported that she died of natural causes.

“She loved Kansas. She loved people from Kansas and representing Kansas for 18 years in the US Senate,” Bill Kassebaum told The Associated Press. “She was an independent-minded Republican who was willing to stand up for what she thought was right, even if that meant going against the party.”

He told CBS News that his mother was “an independent voice that was willing to do what was right for Kansas and the country,” adding that she was willing to speak with constituents even when they disagreed with her votes and positions.

Kassebaum Baker was elected to the Senate in 1978 and served three terms before leaving office in early 1997. Her victory brought national attention: She was the daughter of Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, the unsuccessful 1936 Republican presidential nominee, but she won office in her own right at a time when few women served in the chamber.

When she announced her retirement, she was one of eight women in the Senate and the only woman chairing a Senate committee, the Labor and Human Resources Committee.

A moderate Republican with a plain-spoken style, Kassebaum Baker built a reputation for working across party lines. A 1996 health insurance law bore her name alongside that of Sen. Ted Kennedy, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat. She also supported a ban on assault weapons backed by President Bill Clinton, a position she later said drew the angriest mail of her career.

Her politics sometimes frustrated conservatives, but she remained broadly popular in Kansas. After winning her first Senate race with nearly 54% of the vote, she was re-elected in 1984 with 76% and again in 1990 with 74%.

Kassebaum Baker was born July 29, 1932, as her father, an oilman from Independence, Kansas, was running for governor. She earned a political science degree from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan. Before her Senate career, she worked as a radio-station executive, spent a year on the staff of Kansas Sen. James Pearson and served on the school board in Maize, a Wichita suburb.

In 1978, she entered a crowded Republican primary for an open Senate seat. Pundits estimated the race could cost $1 million, then a large sum in Kansas politics, but she spent less than $12,000 in the first quarter and described herself as “at the bottom of the totem pole.” She won the nomination with less than 31% of the vote, then defeated former Democratic congressman Bill Roy in November while running as Nancy Landon Kassebaum.

She often resisted gestures of public honor. When there was brief talk of naming a new highway in Topeka after her, she said, “Oh, goodness. Absolutely not — no.” On retiring, she said, “I’d rather cuddle up and do needlepoint all day.”

Kassebaum Baker had four children with her first husband, Phil Kassebaum; they divorced in 1979. In 1996, she married former Sen. Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican who later served as U.S. ambassador to Japan. It was the first marriage between a man and woman who had both served in the Senate. He died in 2014.

After leaving office, she served on a bipartisan campaign finance reform commission under Clinton and on a British commission in Africa in 2004-05. Later in life, she broke with the Republican Party, endorsing Democratic candidates for Kansas governor and U.S. senator, including Gov. Laura Kelly in both of her campaigns. In 2021, after supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol, Kassebaum Baker said Trump should be impeached. “This just has gone too far,” she told Kansas City’s KMBC.