UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, November 16, 1994
8A
Yumi Chikamori/
KANSAN
Nancy Kassebaum talks with supporters of then-attorney general candidate Carla Stovall at a reception in Overland Park.
THE KANSAS SENATOR WHO GETS HER WAY BY BEING NICE
Continued from Page 1A.
Landon, who died in 1987, might have admired his daughter's willingness to put her personal judgment before
personal judgment before party loyalty.
After Kassebaum voted for President Clinton's crime bill earlier this year, some irate constituents accused her of straying from family tradition.
"They told me, 'Oh, your father must be turning over in his grave,'" she said. "But they didn't know Dad."
Indeed they didn't.
Later in life, Landon's political opinions remained progressive. He criticized the redbaiting tactics of Joseph McCarthy, argued for racial equality and pushed for diplomatic relations with China.
"When she starts talking about an issue, people listen."
Kassebaum, aides say, has inherited the same instinct for progress tempered by moderation.
Dave Bartel
Chief of staff for Sen. Kassebaum
"Her father was very pragmatic," said Mike Horak, Kassebaum's press secretary and a graduate of KU. "I think that's carried over."
But of all her inheritances, the one that came in most handy during her successful 1978 Senate campaign was her middle name — Landon. Her campaign slogan was, "A fresh face, a trusted name."
When the year was up, she moved back to Wichita.
Most observers agree that she never would have been elected to the Senate had it not been for the legacy of her father.
Before being elected to the Senate in 1978, her only experience as an elected official was on the school board in Maize, Kan., a town with fewer than 1,000 people.
"She got to the Senate because she's AlFlandon's daughter," said Burdett Loomis, professor of political science. "That's not a criticism, it's a simple statement."
Kassebaum graduated from KU with a degree in political science in 1954.
From the house to the Senate
"When I left Washington, I was glad to be going home," she said. "I never intended to come back here."
She followed her husband-to-be, Philip Kassebaum, to the University of Michigan, where she earned her master's degree in diplomatic history and he earned his law degree.
The Kassebaums were married in 1956 and moved to Wichita, where Philip Kassebaum's law career took off.
For the next 19 years, Nancy Kassebaum's life revolved around her husband and her four children; John, Linda, Richard and Bill.
"She spent a lot of time ferrying people around," said Kassebaum's daughter, Linda Johnson, a veterinary pathologist living in the Washington, D.C., area.
Kassebaum's life took a turn in 1975, when she separated from her husband, packed up her three younger children and moved to Washington to join the staff of Sen. James Pearson of Kansas
For a year, she did constituent case work
But when Pearson announced his retirement in late 1977, a crazy notion struck her.
Why shouldn't she run for senator?
"Friends of mine said it was time for a woman," Kassebaum said.
A congratulatory cartoon on the wall in her office reads, "A woman's place is in the house — and the Senate."
Kassebaum and her husband divorced in 1979.
The divorce was amicable, Philip Kassebaum said. He even helped out with her first campaign.
"We remain close friends." he said.
During her first year or two in the Senate, "nice little Nancy" was lightly regarded by Senate colleagues, according to the columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. They quoted a former aide as saying that she went "from the kitchen sink to the United States Senate in a single step."
Yumi Chikamori / KANSAN
But Kassebaum's persistence on key issues earned her the respect of both colleagues and voters, who sent her back to the Senate for a second and third term.
Overturning Reagan's veto
During her second term, she earned much of that respect by leading the charge to overcome President Reagan's 1986 veto of sanctions against South Africa.
In her view, Reagan's theory — that sanctions would hurt the very people they were supposed to help — was valid.
But in the face of such stubbornness from the South African government, and Reagan's blindness to that stubbornness, something had to be done. Kassebaum said.
"We needed a stronger voice." she said.
Kassebaum asked Reagan to sign a bill calling for the release of imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, suspension of the state of emergency imposed by the South African government and a timetable for the dismantling of apartheid.
The Senate's 78-21 vote to override the veto was a stunning blow to the Reagan administration. Not since 1973 had Congress overridden a presidential veto on a major foreign policy issue.
Reagan refused, and the rest is history.
Today, apartheid lies smoldering in the ash heap of history, and Nelson Mandela is the president of South Africa.
Kassebaum remains proud of the day she and her colleagues didn't take Reagan's no for an answer.
"I came to believe that because we were
This summer, Nancy Kassebaum's name was mentioned as a possible replacement for Gene Budig, former chancellor of the University of Kansas. Kassebaum withdrew her name, citing her lack of a Ph. D., as the reason.
unwilling to make the strong statement to end apartheid, we were viewed as suspect by Black Africa," she said.
Kassebaum's support for the veto underscores her judicious and studied approach to the political process: Stay a moderate course. Support reform when the time is right. And never kowtow to the wishes of the big boys even when the big boy is the president of the United States and a member of your own political party.
"That was the difficult part," she said, looking back on the drama leading to the override of Reagan's veto. "Working to overcome a president from your own party."
True to her beliefs
To be sure, she is no conservative ideologue. Her vote for the crime bill put her in a ticklish spot with GOP leaders and earned her a stinging rebuke from National Review, a conservative journal.
She supports abortion rights, which does not endear her to anti-abortion advocacy groups.
"For me, the most conservative position is to say that the government should have no say," she said.
One of Kassebaum's concessions to conservatism is a belief in limited federal government. Welfare should be administered by states. Local school boards, not federal departments, should set education policy. Local know-how is better than national remedies.
"I believe that the community is where the solution lies," she said.
However her beliefs stack up, don't expect to see her locking horns with colleagues on the Senate floor.
Dave Bartel, Kassebaum's chief of staff and a graduate of KU, said Kassebaum's strength was her understanding of the issues, not her ability to slug it out with other senators to get her way.
"She works hard and quietly behind the scenes," he said. "She's not a confrontational person."
"When she starts talking about an issue, people listen," Bartel said.
Instead, she hunkers down,
does her homework and
comes out ready to find a constructive middle ground. And few regard her lightly.
The E. F. Hutton of the Senate has another arrow in her quiver: She's undeniably nice.
How nice?
Before the 1988 presidential election, Time magazine listed her as a possible running mate for George Bush.
"If you look up nice in the dictionary, Nancy Kassebaum's picture may be next to it," Loomis said. "People like to have her on their side."
And even if people aren't on her side, they soon will be, Bartel said.
"Iresistible persistence — that's her style," he said. "It may not gather a lot of headlines. She's never been a newshound. But that's why she's so well respected."
Such suggestions rarely originate with her. For instance, the chancellor brouhaha started with an off-hand remark to a reporter.
Such suggestions rarely originate with her
Her response went something like, "Well, that's great."
But every once in a while, Kassebaum finds herself the subject of a news story or two. Media speculation about whether she would be KU's next chancellor wasn't the first time her name was floated for a new job.
A reporter for the Congressional Quarterly asked her what her reaction was to being on the short list of chancellor candidates. She now knows the reporter couldn't have known about any short list and suspects the reporter of tricking her to get a comment.
It's not hard to figure out why she's in demand.
"It wasn't my creation," she said
From that remark, speculation spread like a Kansas prairie fire, prompting her staff to issue a statement to quell the rumors.
Kennedy, D-Mass, Kassebum rushed off for a Senate vote, and then rushed back to shake hands with the witnesses who spoke during the hearing.
But not her witnesses. Sen. Kennedy's witnesses.
It's not hard to figure out why she's in demand. After a Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee hearing with Sen. Edward
Caria Stovall Kansas attorney general-elect
Kassebaum couldn't pass up the opportunity to thank the Rev. William Cunningham, director of the Hope project in Detroit, for his views on federal job training programs. Never mind that she wouldn't be expected to agree with him. She did, and had to tell him so.
"As a female in Kansas, people ask me, 'Are you going to be another Joan Finney?' I say. No, I'm going to be another Sen. Kassobaum."
"It's just her habit to be very polite," said a nearby reporter.
Such glowing praise from one of the Senate's most stalwart liberals makes Kassebaum uncomfortable, she admitted to a reporter from The Kansas City Star after Kennedy had praised her work on the Labor committee.
"Sen. Kassebaum remains true to her tradition, her beliefs and values," Sen. Kennedy said. "She is fiercely independent. She strives for common ground, and if she thinks common ground is achievable, she will be unwavering in her support."
The habit, Loomis said, is good for her career. "She gets her mileage out of that," he said. "But it's legitimate. She is who she is."
Kassebaum's colleague on the Labor committee agreed.
But by now, she's used to it. Praise like that comes from Washington, D. C. and beyond.
After Kassebaum endorsed then-attorney general candidate Carla Stovall at an Overland Park reception last month, Stovall stepped up to the microphone to thank her for the favor.
"As a female in Kansas, people ask me, 'Are you going to be another Joan Finney?' she told the audience. "I say, No, I'm going to be another Sen. Kassebaum."
Stovall told the audience Kassebaum was a courageous senator who always voted her conscience.
Voting her conscience doesn't always earn her a boxful of thank-you letters from constituents, of course.
But her independence doesn't qualify her as a wild-eyed maverick, Burdett Loomis said.
"She looks at each issue that comes down the pike," he said. "She looks at the Republican stand, and
Kassebain is not expected to run for a fourth term. But never say say. The new Republican majority in the Senate makes the prospect all that more enticing, she said.
"When the time is right, I'll decide," she said. "I'd love to be chairman of the Labor committee."
"Sne's got so much goodwill bank," he said. "Besides, how far are you going to get attacking Nancy Kassebaum?"
In voting his conscience, Loomis said, Kassebaum is as safe as a kitten.
Politics is her life
Standing in an elevator in the Russell Senate Building, Kassebaum tells her aides about her upcoming weekend with her grandchildren, Kristian, 4, and Margot, 3.
"The sad news today is that I wasn't able to get tickets to the circus," she says. "That was going to be my big carrot."
Instead, the grandchildren will have to settle for a more low-key afternoon of playing games and being read to by grandma.
The interest Kassebaum takes in her family doesn't surprise the children's mother, Linda Johnson, who said her mother has a knack for balancing politics and family.
Nor should it surprise anyone that Kassebaum could so deftly weave the business of the nation together with weekends with her grandchildren.
"I've been around politics all my life," she said.