Former Republican Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker of Kansas, the first woman elected to theU.S. Senatewithout previously having a husband serve in Congress, died Friday at 94.

Her son, Bill Kassebaum, told The Associated Press that she died of natural causes.

\"She loved Kansas. She loved people fromKansasand representing Kansas for 18 years in the U.S. Senate,\" he told the AP. \"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.\"

Kassebaum Baker won election to the Senate in 1978 and served three terms before leaving office in 1997. The daughter of former Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, theRepublican Party'sunsuccessful 1936 presidential nominee, she built a reputation as a moderate Republican willing to break with her party.

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Her election brought immediate national attention. By the time she announced her retirement, she was one of eight women serving in the Senate and the only woman chairing a Senate committee.

Kassebaum Baker also developed a reputation for working across party lines. A landmark 1996 health insurance law bore her name alongside that of Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Her political independence occasionally put her at odds with conservatives. She supported anassault weapons banbacked by President Bill Clinton and said the vote generated the angriest mail of her Senate career.

Kassebaum Baker remained highly popular in Kansas, winning re-election with 76% of the vote in 1984 and 74% in 1990.

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She married former Republican Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee in 1996, shortly before leaving the Senate. It marked the first marriage between a man and woman who had both served in the Senate.

Howard Baker, who served as President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff and later as U.S. ambassador to Japan under President George W. Bush, died in 2014.

Kassebaum Baker continued public service after leaving Congress, including serving on a bipartisan commission oncampaign finance reformduring the Clinton administration.

Later in life, she increasingly broke with the Republican Party's direction and endorsed Democrats in several Kansas races, includingDemocratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

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She also called for PresidentDonald Trump's impeachmentafter the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

\"This just has gone too far,\" she told Kansas City's KMBC at the time.

Despite her decades in national politics, Kassebaum Baker maintained a close identification with Kansas.

Before leaving for Japan during her husband's ambassadorship, she reflected on what she would miss.

\"All I can say is, I will miss the Kansas prairie,\" she said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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She was 94.\n\nKassebaum Baker died on Friday of natural causes, according to her son, Bill Kassebaum.\n\n“She loved Kansas. She loved people from Kansas and representing Kansas for 18 years in the US Senate,” he told the Associated Press. “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.”\n\nShe was elected to the US Senate in 1978 and served three terms. Her modest demeanor endeared her to voters of all political stripes, though she shared the progressive Republican politics of her father, Kansas governor Alf Landon, the unsuccessful 1936 Republican nominee for president. Even after leaving the Senate early in 1997, she continued taking on public service roles.\n\nShe married the former US senator Howard Baker, a Tennessee Republican, in 1996. He died in 2014.\n\nKassebaum 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 US senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.\n\nHer election to the Senate brought her immediate national attention. When she announced her retirement, she was among eight senators who were women and the only one to chair a Senate committee, the labor and human resources panel.\n\nShe was also in a dwindling bloc of moderate-to-liberal Republicans, having supported, for example, a ban on assault weapons championed by Democratic president Bill Clinton.\n\nYet she never polarized Kansas conservatives as other GOP moderates did. She connected with voters because she never seemed caught up in the trappings of power, and when she retired, she acknowledged: “I’d rather cuddle up and do needlepoint all day.”\n\nKassebaum Baker broke with the Republican party as it became more conservative later in her life, endorsing Democratic candidates for Kansas governor and US senator, including Democratic governor Laura Kelly, who was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. Kelly’s 2022 Republican opponent, then state attorney general Derek Schmidt, had worked on Kassebaum Baker’s Senate staff.\n\nShe also declared in 2021 that Donald Trump should be impeached after supporters attacked the US Capitol toward the end of his first presidency hoping to stop congressional certification of his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 White House election.\n\n“This just has gone too far,” she told Kansas City’s KMBC news station.",[],"selectedArticleImage","rootArticleImageUrl","consensusHtml","tweets",[],"userSchema","relatedArticles",[316,338,279],"actionData","errors"]

Nancy Kassebaum Baker Dies at 94

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