NANCY LANDON KASSEBAUM Biography - Polititians

 
 

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NANCY LANDON KASSEBAUM

Name: Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker                                                           
Born: 29 July 1932 Topeka, Kansas                                                             
                                                                                             
Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker (born July 29, 1932) formerly represented the state             
of Kansas in the United States Senate, having served from 1978 to 1997. She was               
the daughter of Alf Landon, who was the Governor of Kansas from 1933 to 1937 and             
the 1936 Republican candidate for president. Landon won only in Maine and                     
Vermont, having also lost Kansas to Franklin D. Roosevelt.                                   
                                                                                             
She graduated from the University of Kansas at Lawrence in 1954 where she was a               
member of Kappa Alpha Theta. She received her graduate degree from the                       
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1956.                                                 
                                                                                             
Baker, who went by Nancy Kassebaum while serving in the Senate, was the first                 
woman to serve in the Senate having neither been elected to serve first in the               
House of Representatives, never having been elected to the political office of a             
spouse, never having won a special election to win a senate seat, nor having                 
been appointed to fill out the remainder of a term from a husband after his                   
death while in office or another senator. She was also the first woman to                     
represent Kansas in the Senate.                                                               
                                                                                             
She defeated eight other Republicans in the 1978 primary elections to replace                 
retiring Republican James B. Pearson and then defeated former Democratic                     
Congressman Bill Roy (who lost a previous election bid to Kansas' senior senator,             
Bob Dole, in 1974) in the general election. She was re-elected to her Senate                 
seat in 1984 and 1990, but did not seek re-election in 1996.                                 
                                                                                             
Kassebaum, a moderate to liberal Republican, has often been noted for her health             
care legislation co-sponsored by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Democrat.               
                                                                                             
She is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit   
organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national               
security and foreign policy.                                                                 
                                                                                             
Since 1996 she has been married to former U.S. Senator Howard Baker Jr., of                   
Tennessee.                                                                                   
                                                                                             
Her son, Bill Kassebaum, is a former member of the Kansas House of                           
Representatives.