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Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a Kansas governor's daughter who became the first woman elected to the US Senate without following a spouse into office, has passed away at the age of 94.
Nancy Kassebaum Baker's son reveals the cause of her death
Revealing the cause of her death, Nancy's son Bill Kassebaum shared that she died on Friday of natural causes.
"She loved Kansas. She loved people from Kansas and representing Kansas for 18 years in the U.S. Senate," he told The Associated Press.
He added, "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."
Nancy Kassebaum Baker was elected to the US Senate in 1978 and served three terms. Even after leaving the Senate early in 1997, she continued taking on public service roles.
She married former Sen. Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, in 1996. He died in 2014.
A Kansas icon
Kassebaum Baker remained an icon for Kansans generally. She could work with Senate colleagues of all political philosophies, and a 1996 health insurance law bore her name, along with that of liberal Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Nancy Kassebaum Baker's early life
She was born on July 29, 1932, as her father, an oilman from Independence, was running for the first of his two terms as governor.
Nancy earned a political science degree from the University of Kansas and a master's degree in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in the mid-1950s.
She was a radio-station executive, spent a year in the 1970s on the staff of Kansas Sen. James Pearson and served on the school board in the Wichita suburb of Maize.
The 94-year-old had four children with her first husband, Phil Kassebaum, including Bill, who served a term in the Kansas House. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979.
About Nancy Kassebaum Baker and Howard Baker romance
She and Howard kept their romance low-key, and speculation about a possible marriage did not emerge until mid-1996, in a Washington Post story. They married that December.
It was the first time a man and a woman who had both served in the Senate had wed. Baker was elected to three terms and served from 1967 to 1985 before becoming President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff.
His first wife, Joy, had died in 1993 after a long battle with cancer.
President George W. Bush named her husband ambassador to Japan in 2001, and she went with him for the four-year posting. Howard said she became an important figure in the Asian nation.
Nancy Kassebaum Baker's transition to Democratic Party
Later in life, Kassebaum Baker broke with the Republican Party as it became more conservative, endorsing Democratic candidates for Kansas governor and U.S. senator, including Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly both times, even though Laura's 2022 GOP opponent, then state-Attorney General Derek Schmidt, had worked on her Senate staff.
She also declared in 2021 that President Donald Trump should be impeached after Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol hoping to stop congressional certification of Trump's defeat in 2020 by Democrat Joe Biden.
