Former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker of Kansas, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate without following a husband into office, has died at 94, closing a chapter on a brand of prairie-state Republicanism that prized independence over party loyalty.
Kassebaum Baker died Friday of natural causes, her son Bill Kassebaum told The Associated Press. She had represented Kansas in the Senate for 18 years across three terms, from 1978 to 1997, winning re-election by margins that most politicians only dream about, 76 percent in 1984 and 74 percent in 1990.
Her career traced a particular arc in Republican politics. She entered the Senate as the daughter of Alf Landon, the former Kansas governor who carried the GOP's banner against Franklin Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential race. She left it nearly two decades later as a senator willing to cross party lines on some of the most contentious issues of her era, and, in retirement, as a Republican who drifted further from the party she had once represented.
When Kassebaum Baker won her Senate seat in 1978, she made history. No woman had ever been elected to the U.S. Senate on her own standing, without first being appointed to fill a husband's vacancy or succeeding a spouse who had held the office. That distinction, as Breitbart noted, set her apart in an era when women in Congress remained rare.
By the time she announced her retirement, eight women served in the Senate. She was the only one chairing a committee.
Her son described her in straightforward terms.
"She loved Kansas. She loved people from Kansas and representing Kansas for 18 years in the U.S. Senate."
Bill Kassebaum also offered a characterization that captured both his mother's strength and her willingness to break ranks.
"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."
Kassebaum Baker's most lasting legislative achievement was a landmark 1996 health insurance law she co-authored with Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. The measure bore both their names and stood as one of the signature bipartisan accomplishments of that era in Congress.
She also backed an assault weapons ban supported by President Bill Clinton, a vote that, by her own account, generated the angriest mail of her entire Senate career. For a senator who won re-election by landslide margins in a conservative state, that admission said something about the intensity of the backlash she absorbed from her own voters on the issue.
That willingness to break with Republican orthodoxy on high-profile votes earned her a reputation as a moderate. Whether that label was a compliment or a criticism depended on who was using it.
In 1996, shortly before leaving the Senate, Kassebaum Baker married former Republican Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee. Howard Baker had served as President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff and later as U.S. ambassador to Japan under President George W. Bush. The marriage joined two of the most prominent Republican families in postwar American politics, the daughter of a presidential nominee and a former Senate majority leader.
Before departing for Japan during her husband's ambassadorship, Kassebaum Baker offered a line that captured her attachment to home.
"All I can say is, I will miss the Kansas prairie."
Howard Baker died in 2014.
After leaving Congress, Kassebaum Baker served on a bipartisan commission on campaign finance reform during the Clinton administration. But her distance from the Republican Party grew more pronounced over time.
She endorsed Democrats in several Kansas races in her later years, including Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. And following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, she called for President Donald Trump's impeachment, telling Kansas City's KMBC: "This just has gone too far."
That trajectory, from mainstream Republican senator to a voice publicly opposing her own party's standard-bearer, mirrored the journey of a small but visible group of older GOP figures who found themselves at odds with the party's direction in the Trump era. Kassebaum Baker was hardly alone in that position, but her stature as a trailblazer gave the break added weight in Kansas political circles.
Kassebaum Baker's career resists easy categorization. She won massive margins in a conservative state while casting votes that infuriated parts of her base. She carried her father's Republican pedigree into the Senate and left it having co-authored major legislation with Ted Kennedy. She broke a barrier for women in Congress at a time when the Senate remained an overwhelmingly male institution.
Her record will draw praise from those who value bipartisanship and criticism from those who believe party discipline matters, and both sides will have evidence to cite. What no one can dispute is that Kansas voters sent her back three times by overwhelming margins, which is the most concrete verdict available in a democracy.
In an era when politicians talk endlessly about independence and rarely practice it, Kassebaum Baker practiced it, and paid the price in angry mail, not lost elections. That distinction says more about her than any eulogy can.
