An accomplished Kansas legislator, Sheila Frahm was
appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy created
when Majority Leader Robert Joseph Dole resigned his
seat to run for the presidency in 1996. Frahm, who had
worked her way up from local politics to the Kansas
lieutenant governorship, served just five months after failing
to win renomination to fill the remaining two years of the
unexpired term.
Sheila Frahm was born Sheila Sloan in Colby, Kansas,
on March 22, 1945. She received a BS from Fort Hays
State University in 1967 and also attended the University
of Texas at Austin. Sheila Sloan married Kenneth Frahm,
and the couple had three daughters. Sheila Frahm embarked
on a long career in public service with an emphasis on
education. She chaired the Colby (Kansas) public schools
board of education and the northwest Kansas educational
service center board of education. In 1985 Frahm was
appointed to the Kansas board of education. Re-elected in
1986, she became vice chair in 1987. She was elected to the
Kansas state senate in 1988, serving from 1989 to 1994 and
becoming the first woman to achieve the rank of Kansas
senate majority leader. Frahm was elected the first woman
lieutenant governor of Kansas in 1994 and was appointed the Kansas secretary of administration in 1995.1
On May 24, 1996, Kansas Governor Bill Graves
appointed Frahm to the U.S. Senate as a Republican to
fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Robert Dole,
who had secured the GOP nomination for President
during the spring primaries. Graves praised Frahm’s
“years of community and legislative experience.” Frahm
pledged “my heart and soul to the people of my beloved
Kansas.”2
Senator Frahm was sworn in on June 1, 1996,
and was assigned to the Committee on Armed Services and
the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
The appointment made Kansas the second state to have two
women serving simultaneously as U.S. Senators, as Frahm
joined longtime Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum.
Frahm worked on a variety of legislation during her
brief tenure, helping pass bills on workplace, health care,
and immigration reforms. During her inaugural speech in
the Senate, Frahm voiced her support for election finance
reform but rejected a proposal to create a program to
finance campaigns with federal funds. “Bad reform is not
better than no reform,” Frahm said on the Senate Floor.
“I oppose federal financing of our elections, which would
in effect turn our politicians into a new class of welfare dependents. I came here to reform welfare, not to expand it.
I question why the Congress should seek to pass a bill
that is almost certainly unconstitutional in many of its
key reforms, and puts an unreasonable mandate of high
costs on private business.”3
Shortly before the end of her
term, Frahm managed to steer through the Senate a bill to
designate national historic site status to Nicodemus, Kansas.
Nicodemus, which was located in Frahm’s former Kansas
state senate district, was a settlement founded by African
Americans in the 1870s as they moved west in pursuit of
better livelihoods. By adding her bill to a larger omnibus
parks bill, Frahm ensured historic status for the site, a
move which historic preservationists believed would help
them raise enough money to save it.4
Frahm also supported
abortion rights, which was a polarizing position within the
Kansas Republican Party.
In the August 6 GOP primary, Frahm faced freshman
Representative Sam Dale Brownback, an anti-abortion
conservative with a large network of supporters. Though
she received the backing of Governor Graves and
Senator Kassebaum, Frahm lost to Brownback by a wide
margin.5
Her term of service ended in the Senate on
November 5, 1996. Frahm returned to Colby, Kansas,
where she and her husband managed corn and wheat
production in several nearby counties. In 2002 Frahm
served as the executive director for the Kansas Association of
Community College Trustees, which represented all 19 state
community colleges.
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