Nancy Kassebaum Baker, the Kansas governor's daughter who became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate without following a spouse into office, died of natural causes. She was 94.
Her son, Bill Kassebaum, confirmed the death to The Associated Press. 'She loved Kansas. She loved people from Kansas and representing Kansas for 18 years in the U.S. Senate,' he said. '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.'
A career built on underestimation
Kassebaum Baker was born on July 29, 1932, as her father — oilman and future governor Alf Landon — was running for the first of his two terms in Topeka. She earned a political science degree from the University of Kansas and a master's degree in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in the mid-1950s. Before politics, 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 the Wichita suburb of Maize.
When she entered the 1978 Senate race, pundits estimated the campaign would require $1 million — then a huge sum for Kansas. In the first quarter of 1978, she spent less than $12,000 and described herself as being 'at the bottom of the totem pole.' Nine candidates crowded the Republican primary, including three state senators and a prominent Wichita businessman. She won the nomination with less than 31 percent of the vote, then captured nearly 54 percent in the general election against former two-term Democratic congressman Bill Roy.
Popularity built on principle
Voters rewarded her candor at the ballot box. She won re-election in 1984 with 76 percent of the vote and again in 1990 with 74 percent. When she announced her retirement, she was among eight women senators and the only one chairing a Senate committee — the Labor and Human Resources panel.
A 1996 health-insurance law bore her name alongside that of Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, a testament to her ability to work across the aisle without abandoning her convictions. She also supported a ban on assault weapons championed by President Bill Clinton, a vote she said 'inspired the angriest mail of her career.' Yet she never polarized Kansas conservatives the way other GOP moderates did.
She married former Sen. Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, in 1996. He died in 2014. She had four children from her first marriage to Phil Kassebaum, including Bill, who served a term in the Kansas House.
Upon retiring, she said she would return to a ranch and 90-year-old farmhouse in Kansas' Flint Hills to babysit her grandchildren — she had seven — and acknowledged, 'I'd rather cuddle up and do needlepoint all day.'
What her career tells us
Kassebaum Baker's record is a reminder that electoral durability in a competitive state is built on credibility, not performance. She entered a race with almost no money, won it on character, and held the seat for 18 years by refusing to pretend she was something she was not. Free-market conservatives may have disagreed with some of her votes, but her constituents never doubted where she stood or why. That kind of accountability — rare in any era — is precisely what voters across the spectrum say they want and seldom get. Kansas gave her three terms because she gave Kansas the truth.
