Topic summary
Nancy Kassebaum
July 29, 1932
- Alf Landon (father)
Nancy Josephine Kassebaum Baker (néeLandon; July 29, 1932 – August 21, 2026) was an American politician who served as a Republican member of the United States Senate from Kansas from 1978 to 1997. She was the daughter of Alf Landon, who was governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937 and the Republican nominee in the 1936 presidential election, and the wife of former U.S. Senate majority leader and diplomat Howard Baker.
With her election to the Senate in 1978, Kassebaum entered the national spotlight as the only woman in the U.S. Senate at the time, and as the first woman to represent Kansas in that chamber. She was also the first woman ever elected to a full term in the Senate without succeeding her spouse.
In her three terms in the Senate, Kassebaum demonstrated a political independence that made her a key figure in building bipartisan coalitions in foreign affairs and domestic policy. As chair of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs, she played a limited role in legislation to sanction apartheid South Africa. The 1986 Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, enacted over Ronald Reagan's presidential veto, was drafted by senators Richard Lugar, William Roth, Mitch McConnell, and Bob Dole, although later in life Kassebaum claimed credit for it. As chair of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, she led the fight for major health care reforms that, for the first time, assured health insurance coverage for people changing jobs with pre-existing medical conditions.