She was 94. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a Kansas governor’s daughter who became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate without following a spouse into office, has died.
When she announced her retirement, she was among eight women senators and the only one to chair a Senate committee, the Labour and Human Resources panel. She was elected to the U.S. Her modest demeanour endeared her to voters of all political stripes, though she shared the moderate, progressive Republican politics of her father, Gov. Kassebaum Baker remained an icon for Kansans generally. Her election to the Senate brought her immediate national attention. She was also in a dwindling bloc of moderate-to-liberal Republicans, having supported for example a ban on assault weapons championed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. President George W.
Kassebaum Baker died Friday (August 22, 2026) of natural causes, according to her son, Bill Kassebaum. Senate in 1978 and served three terms. Alf Landon, the unsuccessful 1936 GOP nominee for president. Even after leaving the Senate early in 1997, she continued taking on public service roles. She married former Senator Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, in 1996. He died in 2014. 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 Senator Ted Kennedy. Bush named her husband ambassador to Japan in 2001, and she went with him for the four-year posting.
Baker said she became an important figure in the Asian nation.
