Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 21, 1995 TAG: 9511210084
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Kassebaum, one of a shrinking number of GOP moderates in Congress, will depart at the height of her career as chairman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, with jurisdiction over job training, health, the arts and other issues. She is the only woman who chairs a Senate committee.
`I believe the time has come for me to leave the Senate and pursue other challenges, including the challenge of being a grandmother,'' Kassebaum said Monday in Topeka, Kan.
Kassebaum, 63, has five grandchildren. She and Colorado Sen. Hank Brown are the only Republican senators who have announced plans to retire in 1996. Eight Senate Democrats have said they won't seek re-election next year.
Although Kassebaum has long been overshadowed on the national stage by Kansas' senior senator, Majority Leader Bob Dole, she developed her own ability to influence the national agenda.
``There are people who have power to move people to stand for something,'' said University of Kansas political science professor Burdette Loomis. ``She has great integrity. She is independent.''
Dole's popularity in Kansas never eclipsed that of Kassebaum, daughter of Kansas icon Alf Landon, a former governor and the 1936 Republican nominee for president.
She emerged from a crowded field to win her first Senate race in 1978, then coasted to victory in 1984 and 1990.
``Kassebaum sometimes deferred to Dole as a leader. But Dole knew, every day he went to work, that he was the second-most popular politician in Kansas. And that gave her some freedom,'' Loomis said.
Kassebaum is a defender of abortion rights, favors gun controls and frequently clashed with the Reagan administration, criticizing 1981 tax cuts and leading a 1986 vote to impose sanctions on South Africa that helped end apartheid.
Until this year, she voted against most GOP colleagues by opposing a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and she sided with the Democrats in voting for the 1994 crime bill, much to Dole's dismay.
Dole had nothing but praise for his colleague in a Senate floor speech Monday, however: ``Nancy Kassebaum's record of intelligence, integrity and independence have ensured she will always be remembered as one of the true giants in Kansas political history,'' he said.
by CNB