Nancy Kassebaum Baker, a Kansas governor's daughter who became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate without following a spouse into office, died Friday at the age of 94. Her son, Bill Kassebaum, said she died of natural causes.

"She loved Kansas. She loved people from Kansas and represented Kansas for 18 years in the U.S. Senate," her son 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."

Kassebaum Baker was elected to the Senate in 1978 and served three terms. Her modest demeanor endeared her to voters of all political stripes, though she shared the moderate, progressive Republican politics of her father, Gov. Alf Landon, the unsuccessful 1936 GOP nominee for president.

A Pioneering Career

Her election brought immediate national attention. When she announced her retirement, she was among eight women senators and the only one to chair a Senate committee, the Labor and Human Resources panel.

She was part of a dwindling bloc of moderate-to-liberal Republicans, supporting measures such as a ban on assault weapons championed by President Bill Clinton. Yet she never polarized Kansas conservatives as other GOP moderates did, partly because she never seemed caught up in the trappings of power. As she once put it, "I'd rather cuddle up and do needlepoint all day."

Before entering politics, Kassebaum Baker, born on July 29, 1932, earned degrees from the University of Kansas and the University of Michigan. She worked as a radio-station executive, spent a year in the 1970s on the staff of Kansas Senator James Pearson, and served on the school board in Maize. Her father, an oilman from Independence, was a former governor.

Upset Victory and Senate Tenure

In the first quarter of 1978, she spent less than $12,000 on her Senate campaign. She won the GOP nomination with less than 31% of the vote and then captured the general election with nearly 54% against former congressman Bill Roy.

Once in office, she was known for her pragmatism. She refused to endorse a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, saying "We should be wary of the seemingly simple solution." She won re-election in 1984 with 76% of the vote and again in 1990 with 74%.

A 1996 health insurance law bore her name along with that of liberal Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, reflecting her ability to work across party lines.

Marriage to Howard Baker and Later Life

In December 1996, she married Howard Baker, a former Republican senator from Tennessee. It was the first time a man and a woman who both served in the Senate had wed. Baker died in 2014.

After leaving the Senate early in 1997, she returned to a ranch in the Flint Hills of Kansas. She continued in public service, serving on a bipartisan commission on campaign finance reform under President Bill Clinton and, in 2004-05, on a British commission in Africa. When President George W. Bush named her husband ambassador to Japan in 2001, she accompanied him for the four-year posting.

She remained active in later years. She endorsed Democratic Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, breaking with her party, and declared in 2021 that then-President Donald Trump should be impeached after Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, saying "This just has gone too far."

Kassebaum Baker leaves seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Reflecting on her career, she once said, "All I can say is, I will miss the Kansas prairie."