Nancy Kassebaum, first Kansas woman elected to Senate, dies at 94

Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Kansas and the first woman anywhere elected to a full Senate term whose husband had not served in Congress, died Friday, Aug. 21, at the age of 94.

She died of natural causes in hospice care in Manhattan, Kansas, on Aug. 21, her son Bill Kassebaum confirmed to The Associated Press and The New York Times. A three-term senator, she left office in 1997 after 18 years. Her granddaughter Nellie confirmed the death to KCTV5.

Kassebaum Baker served from 1978 to 1997 and built a moderate record that drew support across party lines. She shared the progressive Republican politics of her father, Alf Landon, the Kansas governor and 1936 Republican presidential nominee, and she was willing to break with her own party when she disagreed with it, a trait her family and colleagues returned to repeatedly after her death.

A Kansas political family

Landon served as governor from 1933 to 1937 and lost the 1936 presidential race to Franklin D. Roosevelt. His daughter was born in Topeka, the state capital, on July 29, 1932, and grew up in a household shaped by Kansas and national politics.

She graduated from the University of Kansas in 1954 and earned a master's degree in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1956. Her early public service was limited to the school board in the small town of Maize. She later worked in the office of Kansas Senator James B. Pearson and became a vice president of the family's communications business.

When she ran for the Senate in 1978, pundits estimated that a competitive Kansas campaign would cost about $1 million, then an enormous sum for the state. In the first quarter of that year, she spent less than $12,000.

Nine candidates crowded the Republican primary, among them two state senators and a prominent Wichita businessman. Running as Nancy Landon Kassebaum, she won the nomination with less than 31 percent of the vote, then took almost 54 percent in November against Bill Roy, a former two-term Democratic congressman.

Months into her first term, she declined to endorse a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, an early break with much of her party.

Her legislative record

Kassebaum Baker's most enduring achievement came in 1996, when she worked with Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The law, known as HIPAA and often called the Kassebaum-Kennedy Act, let workers keep health coverage when they changed or lost jobs and limited exclusions for pre-existing conditions. President Bill Clinton signed it on the South Lawn on Aug. 21, 1996.

In 1995, she became chairwoman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, making her the first woman to lead a major standing Senate committee. The Senate Historical Office recorded her as the second woman ever to chair a standing committee, a distinction she held during the 104th Congress, the same session in which Republicans took control of both chambers.

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.

During her three terms she worked on reducing the federal budget deficit, on arms control and on sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa, and she backed changes to general aviation liability law. She took more conservative positions on labor, opposing proposals to raise the minimum wage and to require businesses to provide unpaid family and medical leave, saying she thought it wrong to mandate benefits.

Breaking with the party

Kassebaum Baker remained the only woman in the Senate until Paula Hawkins, a Florida Republican, joined the chamber in early 1981. When she announced her retirement in November 1995, eight women were serving, and she was the only one among them chairing a committee, a measure of how much the chamber had changed during her tenure.

Later in life, as the Republican Party moved rightward, she broke with it publicly. She endorsed Democratic candidates, including Laura Kelly for Kansas governor and Kamala Harris for president in 2024, and she called for President Donald Trump's impeachment after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, her ties to the party she had represented having frayed near the end of her life.

Kansas lost part of its soul when Nancy Kassebaum died. Senator Kassebaum cared deeply about Kansas, about our country. No one worked harder, or smarter, to make our world a better place.

In December 1996 she married Howard H. Baker Jr., the former Senate Republican leader from Tennessee, the first time a man and a woman who had both served in the Senate had married. Baker later served as U.S. ambassador to Japan under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, and she joined him for the posting. He died in 2014.

In January 2025, President Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Citizens Medal, generally described as the nation's second-highest civilian honor.

Tributes across party lines

Kansas officials from both parties mourned her. Senator Jerry Moran called her a trailblazer who put the well-being of Kansans first, pointing to her role as the first woman to represent the state in the Senate. Senator Roger Marshall called her a true Kansan, and Representative Derek Schmidt, who worked for her for five years, said he was left with a lifetime of cherished memories.

Ty Masterson, president of the Kansas Senate, said the state was grateful for her service and that she had come home to the Flint Hills she loved. Governor Kelly, whom Kassebaum Baker endorsed twice, said she first met the senator 35 years ago and knew at once that she was in the presence of a unique human being.

The family said a private memorial service would be held at a later date and asked that donations be made to the Kansas 4-H Foundation or the Capper Foundation in lieu of flowers.

Kassebaum Baker had four children with her first husband, Philip Kassebaum, whom she married in 1956 and later divorced. Their son William Kassebaum went on to serve in the Kansas House of Representatives, continuing a family presence in Kansas politics that began with his grandfather, Alf Landon.

After the 1994 Republican wave gave the party control of Congress, she voted with the bipartisan majorities that struck a mandatory family cap from the 'Contract With America' and rejected a bid to deny welfare benefits to unmarried teenage mothers. Her reputation as a mediator, built over three terms, made her a frequent bridge between the parties and a figure Democrats and Republicans alike sought out.

Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who was his party's 1996 presidential nominee, said of her that year: 'Nancy Kassebaum does not speak in a loud voice. She does not clamor for media attention. But as all senators know, while her voice may be quiet, her will is strong.' Her modest manner endeared her to Kansas voters of every political stripe, even as she kept the progressive politics she had grown up with.

After the Senate

Even after leaving office early in 1997, Kassebaum Baker took on further public roles and remained a respected civic voice in her home state. She lived for a time in Japan during her husband's ambassadorship and later returned to the Flint Hills of east-central Kansas, spending her final years near Manhattan, where she died.

The family said her 94 years were filled with remarkable successes and challenges and, above all, a deep love for Kansas.