Baker, Irene Bailey, 1901-1994

<p>Edith Irene Bailey Baker (November 17, 1901 – April 2, 1994) was an American politician and a United States Representative from Tennessee. She was the widow of Howard Baker Sr. and the stepmother of Howard Baker Jr.</p>

<p>Baker was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, on November 17, 1901, and attended public schools in Sevierville and Maryville.</p>

<p>Baker served as Deputy County Court Clerk of Sevier County from 1918 to 1922 and as Deputy Clerk and Master of Chancery Court from 1922 to 1924.</p>

<p>After her first husband's death, Baker went to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). On September 15, 1935, she married Howard Baker Sr., who was a widower with two children. The couple raised Baker's two children from his first marriage, Howard H. Baker Jr. and Mary Elizabeth Baker, as well as a daughter of their own, Beverly Irene Baker. She served on the Republican National Committee from 1960 to 1964.</p>

<p>Irene Bailey Baker came to Congress as part of the “widow’s mandate,” succeeding a powerful and well-connected husband who died so suddenly that party leaders were caught unprepared to name a long-term successor. Baker had long before established herself as a politician in her own right, serving as a Tennessee Republican national committeewoman and chairing the state’s Grass Roots Organization of Republican Women. An adept campaigner, she nevertheless ran on the reputation of her late husband, Tennessee Congressman Howard Henry Baker, in a special election to fill his vacant seat. “I stand on Howard’s record,” Irene Baker declared, on her way to winning election to a 10-month term in which her chief goal was to provide continuity for her husband’s legislative agenda.</p>

<p>Edith Irene Bailey was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, on November 17, 1901. She attended public schools in Maryville and Sevierville and studied music. She served in local government as a court clerk from 1918 to 1924, eventually becoming the deputy clerk and master in the chancery court in Sevierville. Her first husband died, and she was hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as an abstractor of titles in the early 1930s. She met Howard Baker, a widower, and they were married in 1935. The couple raised Baker’s two children from his first marriage: Howard Henry Baker Jr., and Mary Elizabeth Baker, and one of their own: Beverly Irene Baker.</p>

<p>Howard Baker was a lawyer who had served briefly in the Tennessee legislature before working as the attorney general for a judicial circuit that encompassed six counties in the northeastern part of the state. He also published the weekly Cumberland Chronicle in his hometown of Huntsville, Tennessee. In the 1930s, he became a powerful player in state GOP politics, working as a party official while establishing his own law firm in Huntsville. He was a delegate to the 1940 GOP convention and, in 1948 and 1952, was chairman of the Tennessee delegation at the Republican National Convention. Irene worked on her husband’s unsuccessful campaigns for governor in 1938 and for U.S. Senator in 1940. When Howard Baker won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1950 in an eastern Tennessee district which encompassed Knoxville, Irene worked in his Washington, DC, office. Congressman Baker eventually became Tennessee’s leading GOP power broker and the number-two Republican on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. In his subsequent six reelection campaigns he never faced serious competition, either within his party or from Democrats. Since the founding of the Republican Party in 1856, Baker’s district had always voted Republican.</p>