Howard Baker

Howard Henry Baker Jr. (November 15, 1925 – June 26, 2014) was an American politician, diplomat and photographer who served as a United States Senator from Tennessee from 1967 to 1985. During his tenure, he rose to the rank of Senate Minority Leader and then Senate Majority Leader. A member of the Republican Party, Baker was the first Republican to be elected to the U.S. Senate in Tennessee since the Reconstruction era.

Known in Washington, D.C., as the "Great Conciliator", Baker was often regarded as one of the most successful senators in terms of brokering compromises, enacting legislation, and maintaining civility. For example, he had a lead role in the fashioning and passing of the Clean Air Act of 1970 with Democratic senator Edmund Muskie. A moderate conservative, he was also respected by his Democratic colleagues.

Baker sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 but dropped out after the first set of primaries. From 1987 to 1988, he served as White House Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan. From 2001 to 2005, he was the United States Ambassador to Japan.

Baker was born on November 15, 1925, in Huntsville, Tennessee, to Dora Ladd Baker and Howard Baker Sr. His father served as a Republican member of the US House of Representatives from 1951 to 1964, representing Tennessee's Second District. Baker attended The McCallie School in Chattanooga, and after graduating, he attended Tulane University in New Orleans. Baker was an alumnus of the Alpha Sigma Chapter of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. During World War II, he trained at a U.S. Navy facility on the campus of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, in the V-12 Navy College Training Program. He served as a lieutenant in the United States Navy and graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Law in 1949. That year, he was admitted to the Tennessee bar and began his law practice.

Baker began his political career in 1964, when he lost to the liberal Democrat Ross Bass in a U.S. Senate election to fill the unexpired term of the late Senator Estes Kefauver. However, Baker only lost by 4.7% points, the closest that a Republican had come to being popularly elected to the Senate from Tennessee.^{[citation needed]}

In 1966, Bass lost the Democratic primary to the Governor of Tennessee, Frank G. Clement, and Baker handily won his Republican primary race against Kenneth Roberts, 112,617 (75.7%) to 36,043 (24.2%). Baker won the general election, capitalizing on Clement's failure to energize the Democratic base, especially organized labor. He won by a somewhat larger-than-expected margin of 56% to Clement's 44%. Baker thus became the first Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee since the Reconstruction era and the first Republican to be popularly elected to the Senate from Tennessee. Baker voted for both the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Baker was re-elected in 1972 and again in 1978 and served from January 3, 1967, to January 3, 1985. In 1969, he was already a candidate for the Minority Leadership position that opened up with the death of his father-in-law, Everett Dirksen, but Baker was defeated 24–19 by Hugh Scott. At the beginning of the next Congress, in 1971, Baker ran again, losing again to Scott, 24–20.

When Scott retired, Baker was elected as leader of the Senate Republicans in 1977 by his Republican colleagues, defeating Robert Griffin, 19–18. Baker led the Senate GOP for the last eight years of his tenure, serving two terms as Senate Minority Leader from 1977 to 1981, and two terms as Senate Majority Leader from 1981 to 1985, a role he transitioned to after the Republicans gained the majority in the Senate in the 1980 elections.