Kassebaum, Nancy Landon (1932-…), a Kansas Republican, served in the United States Senate from 1979 to 1997. She was elected in 1978 and reelected in 1984 and 1990. She did not run for reelection in 1996. Kassebaum was the first woman elected to a full term in the Senate who did not succeed her husband in either the Senate or the House of Representatives. Several women had previously been appointed to the Senate to complete their husbands’ terms. Kassebaum had never held a federal or state office before she became a senator. In the Senate, she was considered a moderate Republican. In 1996, she and Senator Edward M. Kennedy successfully promoted the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which includes a provision that workers can change jobs without losing their medical insurance coverage.
Kassebaum was born on July, 1932, in Topeka, Kansas. She is a daughter of Alfred M. Landon, a former Kansas governor and Republican presidential candidate. He lost the 1936 election to Franklin D. Roosevelt in a landslide. Kassebaum graduated from the University of Kansas and earned a master’s degree at the University of Michigan. In 1956, she married John Philip Kassebaum, an attorney and businessman. The couple divorced in 1979. In 1996, she married former U.S. Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr.
