Nancy Kassebaum

Nancy Josephine Kassebaum Baker (born July 29, 1932 ) is an American politician who represented the State of Kansas in the United States Senate from 1978 to 1997.

She is the daughter of Alf Landon, who was Governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937 and the 1936 Republican nominee for president, and the widow of former Senator and diplomat Howard Baker.

She attended Topeka High School and graduated in 1950.

She graduated from the University of Kansas in Lawrence in 1954, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta, and where she met her first husband, Philip Kassebaum.

They were married in 1955.

In 1956, she received a master's degree in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan.

They settled in Maize, Kansas, where they raised four children.

She worked as vice president of Kassebaum Communications, a family-owned company that operated several radio stations.

Kassebaum also served on the Maize School Board.

In 1975, Kassebaum and her husband were legally separated; their divorce became final in 1979.

Kassebaum worked in Washington, D.C., as a caseworker for Senator James B. Pearson of Kansas in 1975, but returned to Kansas the following year.

In late 1977, Senator Pearson announced he would not seek re-election to a third full term.

With her victory in the 1978 U.S. Senate election in Kansas, Kassebaum entered the national spotlight as the only woman in the U.S. Senate, and as the first woman to represent Kansas.

She was also the first woman ever elected to a full term in the Senate without her husband having previously served in Congress.

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 leading role in legislation to sanction the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, which required the successful override of a presidential veto.

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.

Nancy Josephine Baker was born in Topeka, Kansas, the daughter of Kansas First Lady Theo (née Cobb) and Governor Alf Landon.

The unexpected announcement of a rare open seat immediately drew a flood of candidates into the 1978 Republican primary, including two highly respected state senators, three successful businessmen, three others and Nancy Kassebaum.

At the time that she entered the race, Kassebaum was legally separated from her husband Philip but not yet divorced.

She chose to use the name Nancy Landon Kassebaum to capitalize on her father's political reputation in the state.

She defeated eight other Republicans in the 1978 primary elections to replace retiring Republican Pearson and then defeated former Democratic Congressman Bill Roy (who narrowly lost a previous election bid to Kansas's junior senator, Bob Dole, in 1974) in the general election.

For the rest of her political career, she was primarily known as Nancy Kassebaum.

She expressed strong support of anti-apartheid measures against South Africa in the 1980s.

In 1981, Kassebaum became chair of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs and entered the growing controversy surrounding the policy of apartheid — racial segregation and discrimination — in South Africa.

She issued a public call for President Reagan and other Republicans to toughen U.S. policy toward the white minority government in Pretoria.

Although President Reagan condemned apartheid, he strongly opposed economic sanctions despite growing pressure from Congress, including Kassebaum and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

To break the impasse, the two senators joined key Democrats in supporting targeted sanctions against the South African government, setting specific anti-apartheid goals and conditions, including a demand that South Africa release ANC leader Nelson Mandela from prison.

In March 1982, Kassebaum headed a U.S. delegation to observe national elections in El Salvador, where the U.S.-backed military junta was battling leftist guerrillas while being unable to control human rights abuses by government forces and far-right paramilitary groups.

The heavy turnout on Election Day convinced Kassebaum that the leftists lacked popular support.

Kassebaum became a key member of bipartisan efforts to support the Salvadoran government with economic and military aid, while pressuring the government on human rights, land reforms and more effective steps to prevent a guerrilla victory.

She was re-elected to her Senate seat in 1984 and 1990 but did not seek re-election in 1996.

From the start of her Senate tenure, Kassebaum defied stereotypes, voting moderate to liberal on most social issues, but conservative on federal spending and government mandates.

She helped lead an unsuccessful bipartisan effort to curb soaring federal deficits in the early years of the Reagan administration.

But she developed a reputation as a centrist broker with significant impact on key issues in both foreign policy and domestic affairs.

Kassebaum is known for her health care legislation, known as the Kennedy-Kassebaum Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which was co-sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat.

She was also active in foreign policy.

The bipartisan legislation, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margins but was then vetoed by President Reagan, forcing Kassebaum and Lugar into a major battle against the president and leadership of their own party.

On September 29, 1986, the House voted 315-to-84 to override Reagan’s veto.

The Senate followed suit three days later and on a 78-to-21 vote passed the bipartisan sanctions bill into law.