Baker, Nancy Kassebaum, 1932-

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1932-07-29

Birth 1932

Gender:

Female

Nationality: Americans,

Language: English

Biographical notes:

Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker (née Landon; born July 29, 1932) is an American politician who represented the State of Kansas in the United States Senate from 1978 to 1997. She is the daughter of Alf Landon, who was Governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937 and the 1936 Republican nominee for president, and the widow of former Senator and diplomat Howard Baker. She was the first woman ever elected to a full term in the Senate without her husband having previously served in Congress. She is also the first woman to have represented Kansas in the Senate.

Born in Topeka, Kansas, Nancy Landon graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1954 before earning a master's degree in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1956. After marrying her first husband and moving back to Kansas, she worked as vice president of Kassebaum Communications, a family-owned company that operated several radio stations and also served on the Maize School Board. Kassebaum worked in Washington, D.C., as a caseworker for Senator James B. Pearson of Kansas in 1975.

When Senator Pearson declined to seek re-election in 1978, Kassebaum declared herself a candidate for the open seat. She defeated eight other Republicans in the 1978 primary elections to replace retiring Republican James B. Pearson and then defeated former Democratic Congressman Bill Roy in the general election. A moderate-to-liberal Republican, she was re-elected to her Senate seat in 1984 and 1990 but did not seek re-election in 1996.

Shortly before leaving the Senate, Kassebaum married former U.S. Senator Howard Baker, Jr. of Tennessee. She worked briefly as a visiting professor at Iowa State University while she and Baker divided their time between homes in Kansas and Tennessee. In 2001 Kassebaum was named a co-chair of the Presidential Appointment Initiative Advisory Board which made recommendations to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on how to streamline the presidential appointment process. Later that year, when Howard Baker was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Kassebaum accompanied him on his assignment to Tokyo.

After Howard Baker's death, Kassebaum moved back to Kansas permanently, residing on a family ranch in Morris County. A critic of Donald Trump, she backed Democrats Laura Kelly and Barbara Bollier in the 2018 Kansas gubernatorial race and 2020 Kansas U. S. Senate race respectively.