SALON

Monday, Jul 7, 2008 11:40 AM UTC

Obama veepstakes: The other woman

She's no Hillary Clinton, but Kathleen Sebelius, the popular governor of Kansas, may have a shot at being Barack's running mate.

By

Topics: 2008 Elections, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democratic Party, Barack Obama,

Obama veepstakes: The other womanPresident Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

Kathleen Sebelius — the silver-haired two-term Democratic governor of mostly ultra-Republican Kansas — is a passionate advocate of political moderation, as oxymoronic as that may seem. Discussing the Republican Party’s lurch to the far right in a speech last week to the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, Sebelius said, “It gives an enormous opportunity for Democrats to reintroduce themselves as the sensible, pragmatic, practical approach to coalition government. That is what attracted me to Barack Obama in the first place.”

Since endorsing Obama in late January, Sebelius has been a tireless campaigner for the Illinois senator, who has Kansas roots on his mother’s side. Obama, who often resists the sloppy excess of rote political praise, pulled out all the stops when asked last week about Sebelius as a possible running mate. “I love Kathleen Sebelius,” he gushed. “I think she is as talented a public official as there is right now. Integrity. Competence. She can work with all people of all walks of life. But I promised that I am not going to say anything about my vice president until I actually introduce my vice president.”

As the other woman in the vice-presidential derby, Sebelius is often regarded as a road-company version of Hillary Clinton, a pale reflection of the real thing. In an interview in Chicago, right before her speech to the DLC, I asked Sebelius what Obama can do to win over women voters angered by the way that Clinton was treated during the primaries. “At the end of the day,” she said, “I have absolutely no doubt that those voters will embrace Barack’s candidacy. I think all he needs to do — and he is doing it and will continue to do it — is to talk about his vision, to talk about his life story … His mom and his grandmother raised him. He’s married to this accomplished and focused working woman. And he’s the father of two daughters. The likelihood that he will ever lose a frame of women’s issues is slim to none.”

Perhaps more politically relevant than her gender, Sebelius as veep would accentuate Obama’s professed vision of a post-partisan America. Chosen to deliver the Democratic response to George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in January, Sebelius opted to go with bland bring-us-together sentiments: “The American people — folks like you and me — are not nearly as divided as our rancorous politics might suggest.”

Still, aside from perhaps New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, it is hard to think of a political figure who operates in a more inclusive fashion than Sebelius. “It’s the only way she can be an effective governor in a Republican state,” says Mark Parkinson, a former GOP state chairman who abandoned his party to successfully run with Sebelius for lieutenant governor in 2006. Mike Hayden, a Republican governor in the 1980s who now serves in the Sebelius Cabinet, adds, “Kathleen does have this great ability to reach across the partisan divide.”

The personal life of the 60-year-old Sebelius embodies this across-the-aisle harmony. Her husband, Gary Sebelius, a federal magistrate, is the son of the late Kansas Republican congressman Keith Sebelius. Her father is former Democratic Ohio Gov. John Gilligan, a one-term liberal who toyed with running for president in 1976. Asked about the similarities of the father-and-daughter governing styles, Gilligan cracked, “She knew how to get reelected. I didn’t.”

She has prospered, romping home with 58 percent of the vote in 2006, by taking advantage of the ideological warfare in the Republican Party. “Kansas has evolved into a weird third-party system with the rise of the social conservatives,” explains Alan Ehrenhalt, the executive editor of Governing magazine, which covers state and local government. “If Sebelius allies herself with the suburban moderate Republicans, they can’t beat her.” By holding the line on taxes, Sebelius has been a reassuring figure to the business community on most issues. “Kansas Democrats have never been screaming liberals,” says Hayden. “All our Democrat leaders have been moderates. We don’t know what a liberal is in Kansas.”

But Sebelius can hit the liberal high notes on issues ranging from abortion rights (as a pro-choice Catholic she has battled with social conservatives for years) to the environment. In May, she vetoed for the third time legislation that would permit the construction of two coal-fired electric power plans in southwestern Kansas. “The reason it was so newsworthy is that this was the first time that a coal plant was rejected solely because of carbon emissions,” says Parkinson, who as lieutenant governor oversees energy policy. Even though critics predictably claimed that Sebelius was costing Kansas jobs with her go-green environmental stance, the governor had political cover, since 86 percent of the electricity that would be produced by the coal plants would flow to other states.

If Obama were to tap Sebelius, whom he first met during his 2004 Senate campaign, it would not be a gambit to snag the six electoral votes of Kansas, a state so Republican that Bush carried 103 of its 105 counties in 2004. Even when Obama campaign manager David Plouffe recently gave an upbeat presentation to the press about the 2008 electoral map, Kansas was never mentioned as anything but part of John McCain’s base. Asked at a press conference at the DLC meeting whether Obama could carry Kansas if she were on the ticket, Sebelius gamely responded, “Well, twice in our history has Kansas voted for a Democrat for president. The last time was 1964. So I am not betting on it, but I think we can make a full-court press in Kansas.”

Unlike some politicians who bristle at the mere mention of the vice presidency, Sebelius appears to be enjoying her moment in the spotlight, even as she airily says, “I think that Barack has a wide variety of great possibilities and choices” for the veep slot. As her father puts it, “Kathleen is level-headed about the whole thing. She knows it’s a long shot, but she’s going with the flow.” As a girl with solid Great Plains values named Dorothy discovered in another era, it is a long way from Kansas to the Emerald City. But sometimes in politics, the ruby slippers just fit.

Walter Shapiro is Salon's Washington bureau chief. A complete listing of his articles is here. More Walter Shapiro.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 139 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations