A moderate Republican from Kansas, she served three terms before tiring of political strife. “I couldn’t get elected today,” she said in 2013.
Nancy Kassebaum, a three-term moderate Republican from Kansas who was the first woman to chair a major standing committee in the United States Senate, died on Friday in Manhattan, Kan. She was 94.
The death, at a hospice care facility, was confirmed by her son William Kassebaum.
As the leader of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources (now known as the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) from 1995 to 1997, Senator Kassebaum won passage of legislation to insure the portability of health insurance coverage when workers changed jobs. She and the bill’s Democratic co-sponsor, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, overcame months of opposition from Senator Bob Dole, the majority leader and her close friend, fellow Republican and fellow Kansan.
She had earlier played a role as Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of a 1986 bill to enact economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. As chairman of a subcommittee on African affairs, she met with the president, urging him to challenge the regime: “There is one person they might listen to, and that is President Reagan.” Instead, he warned of the threat of Marxist tyranny if apartheid fell. She joined 77 other senators as they overrode his veto.
Over her Senate career, which lasted from 1978 to 1997, her voting record was scored at 56 percent by the American Conservative Union and 37 percent by the liberal organization Americans for Democratic Action. On most economic issues, she voted conservatively. But from her first run, she supported abortion rights, saying in a campaign debate, “Abortions are seldom the right moral choice, but I feel there should be a choice.”
In a 2013 interview for this obituary, she said that because of her views on abortion and her support for a ban on assault weapons, “I couldn’t get elected today” in Kansas. She was a critic of President Trump from his first campaign, and endorsed Kamala Harris in her race against him in 2024. In recent years, she also endorsed Democratic candidates for governor and senator in Kansas.
She had no trouble winning her three terms, though, and was a heavy favorite to win again in 1996. But like many moderates, then and now, she had tired of the political strife in the capital.
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