Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius

Dem-Kan.

Governor Challenger

Born May 15, 1948

Biography

The daughter of John Gilligan, a Democrat who served as Ohio governor in 1971-75, Kathleen Sebelius grew up around politics. She also married into a political family: husband Gary is the son of former U.S. Rep. Keith Sebelius, a Republican who represented western Kansas in Congress for a dozen years, starting in 1969.

Married at the Ohio governor's mansion, she came to Kansas to become a special assistant to the Kansas secretary of corrections in 1975. Three years later, she became executive director of the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association, a job she held for eight years, until she ran for the Kansas House.

She served eight years in the Legislature, including as chairwoman of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee in 1991-92, dealing with hot-button issues such as abortion. She was elected insurance commissioner in 1994.

Profile

Kathleen Sebelius has positioned herself as a moderate, someone who plans to make government more efficient and business friendly, yet sees education as the state's top priority and the rising cost of health insurance and prescription drugs as big issues.

She has said that the state needs to increase teacher salaries and spend more on its public schools, endorsing a study in May that suggested the state needs to put another $390 million a year (on top of the $2.3 billion it already spends) into aid to public schools to provide all students with an adequate education. However, in one forum, she said, "No one's talking about a tax increase. We need to do more with less."

She has said she plans to initiate a top-to-bottom review of state government to find inefficiencies. To doubters, she points to her experience as insurance commissioner, saying she turned around an inefficient Insurance Department.

She supports abortion rights _ and once voted as a legislator in favor of taxpayer financed abortions _ but says she'll seek no changes in current laws.

Campaigns

Kathleen Sebelius was elected to the Kansas House in 1986 and re-elected three more times before deciding to run for insurance commissioner in 1994. In that race, she unseated Republican incumbent Ron Todd by making his ties to the industry an issue.

She refused to take contributions from companies or individuals licensed or regulated by the Insurance Department, a pledge she maintains even as she is running for governor.

Even in a bad year for Democrats, she defeated Todd handily. She won re-election with about 59 percent of the vote in 1998, something that made her this year's presumed Democratic gubernatorial nominee early. Despite the state's Republican heritage, she is perceived as the leader, having raised $1.8 million through late July and convinced some moderate GOP defectors to support a "Republicans for Sebelius."

However, with the race expected to tighten, she did have a serious gaffe. During a candidate forum, discussing highway funding and wishing to compare Kansas' well-maintained highways to worse roads in Missouri, she related how she had to drive back from Ohio when all flights were grounded following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

She then said, "The roads in Missouri were much more terrifying to me than the attacks on the World Trade Center, because I really did think my life was far more at risk." She apologized the next day.

Contact

To reach Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius or staff in Kansas, call 785-272-4900. Email: ksebelius@ink.org kathleen@ksgovernor.com. World Wide Web: http://www.ksinusrance.org http://www.ksgovernor.com.