Irene Bailey Baker came to Congress as part of the “widow’s
mandate,” succeeding a powerful and well-connected
husband who died so suddenly that party leaders were
caught unprepared to name a long-term successor. Baker
had long before established herself as a politician in her
own right, serving as a Tennessee Republican national
committeewoman and chairing the state’s Grass Roots
Organization of Republican Women. An adept campaigner,
she nevertheless ran on the reputation of her late husband,
Tennessee Congressman Howard Henry Baker, in a special
election to fill his vacant seat. “I stand on Howard’s record,”
Irene Baker declared, on her way to winning election to
a 10-month term in which her chief goal was to provide
continuity for her husband’s legislative agenda.
Edith Irene Bailey was born in Sevierville, Tennessee,
on November 17, 1901. She attended public schools in
Maryville and Sevierville and studied music. She served
in local government as a court clerk from 1918 to 1924,
eventually becoming the deputy clerk and master in the
chancery court in Sevierville. Her first husband died, and
she was hired by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as
an abstractor of titles in the early 1930s. She met Howard
Baker, a widower, and they were married in 1935. The
couple raised Baker’s two children from his first marriage:
Howard Henry Baker Jr., and Mary Elizabeth Baker, and
one of their own: Beverly Irene Baker.1
Howard Baker was a lawyer who had served briefly in
the Tennessee legislature before working as the attorney
general for a judicial circuit that encompassed six counties
in the northeastern part of the state. He also published
the weekly Cumberland Chronicle in his hometown of
Huntsville, Tennessee. In the 1930s, he became a powerful
player in state GOP politics, working as a party official
while establishing his own law firm in Huntsville. He was
a delegate to the 1940 GOP convention and, in 1948 and
1952, was chairman of the Tennessee delegation at the
Republican National Convention. Irene worked on her
husband’s unsuccessful campaigns for governor in 1938
and for U.S. Senator in 1940. When Howard Baker won
election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1950 in
an eastern Tennessee district which encompassed Knoxville,
Irene worked in his Washington, DC, office. Congressman
Baker eventually became Tennessee’s leading GOP power
broker and the number-two Republican on the powerful
Ways and Means Committee. In his subsequent six reelection
campaigns he never faced serious competition,
either within his party or from Democrats.2 Since the
founding of the Republican Party in 1856, Baker’s district
had always voted Republican.
Though aligned with the conservative wing of the party
and a supporter of Ohio Senator Robert Alphonso Taft for
the presidency in 1952, Congressman Baker supported the
Democratic majority on such key issues as Social Security
entitlements, the TVA, and the Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC). The latter two programs were of special interest to
eastern Tennesseans, for whom the TVA provided much of
the industrial infrastructure. The AEC, which managed the
Oak Ridge Nuclear Laboratories, provided many jobs to the
local economy. Baker once described the TVA as “a part of
our Second District everyday life.”3 In 1959 Congressman
Baker played a key part in the passage of a TVA self-financing
act that renewed the agency’s authority to generate
power for seven states. He also was instrumental in helping
the TVA retain its forestry and conservation programs.4
When Congressman Baker died of a sudden heart attack
on January 7, 1964, the Tennessee Republican leadership
chose Irene Baker to run in the March 10, 1964, special
election. The decision was motivated in part by the desire
to stave off intraparty rivalry. It worked exceedingly well.
Baker pledged only to fill the remaining 10 months of her
husband’s term, allowing GOP leaders to select a candidate
for the fall 1964 elections. Irene Baker campaigned on her
husband’s reputation. “I am for full employment at Oak
Ridge, in the coal mining regions, in more industry for
the district, for a balanced budget and fiscal responsibility
and for a reduction in taxes based on a reduction in
federal expenditures,” she said during a campaign rally.
She also supported her husband’s resolution to amend the
Constitution to permit the reading of the Bible and prayers
in public schools. “To say these things could possibly create
questions of how I stand, and there can be no question of
that.”5 Potential Republican contenders stepped aside, and
Baker ran an efficient campaign against her Democratic
rival, Willard Yarbrough, the assistant city editor of
the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Despite light voter turnout,
Baker won the special election by a margin of 55 percent
to 43 percent, or about 9,000 votes out of 72,000 cast.6
Congresswoman Baker was sworn in to the 88th
Congress (1963–1965) on March 19, 1964. During her
short term she served on the Committee on Government
Operations. In that position Representative Baker continued
many of her husband’s policies: advocating a balanced
federal budget, looking to protect jobs in her district’s major
industries of coal mining and nuclear research laboratories,
and supporting the TVA. She also advocated cost of living
increases for Social Security recipients and criticized the
Lyndon B. Johnson administration for risking inflation
through excessive government spending. “I feel that we owe
it to Social Security beneficiaries to increase their benefits,”
Baker explained to colleagues in a floor speech. “It [the
economy] is not their fault.”7
As promised, Baker declined to run for the 89th
Congress (1965–1967), returning to private life in
Knoxville. She was succeeded by yet another family dynasty,
headed by the former mayor of Knoxville, John James
Duncan. Duncan served from 1965 until his death in June
1988; he was succeeded by his son, John J. Duncan Jr.
Irene Baker served as Knoxville’s director of public welfare
from 1965 to 1971. Her stepson, Howard H. Baker Jr.,
continued the family political tradition by winning election
in 1966 as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He served from
1967 to 1985, becoming Senate Majority Leader in 1981.
Irene Baker died in Loudon, Tennessee, on April 2, 1994.
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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