Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker (ret.)

Nancy Kassebaum Baker was born in Topeka, Kansas, daughter of the Republican governor Alfred M. Landon, who was the 1936 Republican Presidential nominee, running against Franklin D. Roosevelt. She received her B.A. from the University of Kansas in 1954, and her M.A. in diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1956. In her sophomore year at Kansas she met Philip Kassebaum, and they married in 1955. 

Alone among her siblings she had always been interested in politics, and she entered public life in Washington in 1975 as Nancy Landon Kassebaum, taking a job as aide to Kansas Senator James B. Pearson. When Pearson retired in 1978, she successfully vied against eight other candidates for his seat, becoming the only woman in the Senate and the first one since Margaret Chase Smith lost her seat in 1972. She was the first woman not to have followed her husband into politics, and only the fourth woman to be elected to a full six-year term. She was re-elected in 1984, and again in 1990, and at the end of this term she married her long-time colleague from Tennessee, Howard Baker, former Senate majority leader and White House Chief of Staff under President Reagan. 

During her first, term, after Reagan became President, she was appointed to the Committee on Foreign Relations, where she became Chairman of the Sub-committee on African Affairs. She was the first woman to chair a major committee -- that on Labor and Human Resources -- and also served as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation.  

When she first ran for office, she started that she wanted "to bring government back to the people". She has described herself as "thoughtful and independent", characteristics that were illustrated, for example, in 1990, when she voted in support of economic sanctions against Iraq, at a time when the United States was supporting Saddam Hussein. 

She has four children and seven grandchildren.