Nancy Kassebaum Baker, trailblazing former US senator from Kansas, dies at 94

Nancy Kassebaum Baker, daughter of a Kansas governor and the first woman elected to the US Senate without first following a husband into the office, has died at age 94. Her son, Bill Kassebaum, told the Associated Press she died on Friday of natural causes, describing her deep affection for Kansas and its people and her independent streak as a Republican willing to break from her party when she believed it was right.

Elected to the Senate in 1978, she served three terms marked by a modest public demeanor that won support across the political spectrum, even as her own views echoed the progressive Republicanism of her father, Alf Landon, a former Kansas governor and the unsuccessful 1936 Republican presidential nominee. She stayed active in public life after leaving the Senate in 1997.

In 1996 she married former Tennessee senator Howard Baker, who died in 2014. Known for working across the aisle, she co-sponsored a 1996 health insurance law alongside liberal Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, which still carries her name.

National profile

Her Senate win drew national attention, and by the time she retired she was one of only eight women senators and the sole woman chairing a Senate committee, leading the labor and human resources panel. She belonged to a shrinking group of moderate-to-liberal Republicans, backing measures such as an assault weapons ban championed by President Bill Clinton. Unlike other GOP moderates, she avoided alienating Kansas conservatives, largely because she never appeared drawn to the trappings of power.

As the Republican party shifted further right in later years, Kassebaum Baker distanced herself from it, endorsing Democratic candidates including Kansas governor Laura Kelly. In 2021, she said Donald Trump should be impeached following the attack on the US Capitol by his supporters, telling a Kansas City news station that matters had gone too far.