By Tom O'Neill
The Cincinnati Enquirer

She can always get a seasoned political adviser on the phone. Her dad's good that way. He can certainly offer insight on being an incoming Democratic governor in a Republican-leaning state mired in a budget shortfall - his was Ohio 31 years ago, hers is Kansas today.

Kansas governor-elect Kathleen Sebelius is handed flowers by her father, former Ohio governor John Gilligan. They are the first father and daughter to win governorships. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

Or the topic could be lighter - another shipment of Graeter's ice cream, her favorite old slice of Cincinnati. Any flavor involving chocolate chips.

This is Kansas governor-elect Kathleen Sebelius, 54, the athletic, high-achieving kid from Cincinnati whose political career, in some respects, mirrors that of her father, former Ohio governor and U.S. Congressman John Gilligan, who at age 81 serves on the Cincinnati School Board.

They represent the first time in U.S. history that a father and daughter have both been elected governor.

"As a kid," she says in her office at the Kansas state capitol, "I loved politics, I loved election activities, was always involved as a volunteer. But I didn't grow up thinking I'd be a candidate for office someday."

But others did. At least Sister Anna McDermott, 89, who taught Kathleen in third grade at the Summit Country Day School.

The year was 1956, maybe '57.

SEBELIUS FILE

Kathleen watches her father sworn in as Ohio governor in 1971. | ZOOM |

• 1948: May 15, born in Cincinnati to John and Katie Gilligan. • 1964: Takes first active role in campaigning in a major race for her father, who is elected to U.S. Congress. • 1966: Graduates from Summit Country Day School, five months before her father is defeated in his re-election bid for the U.S. Congress by Robert Taft Jr. • 1970: Graduates from Trinity College, Washington, D.C. • 1971: Hits the campaign trail in her father's successful bid to become governor of Ohio. • 1974: Marries Gary Sebelius in the governor's mansion in Columbus. • 1977: Earns master's degree in public administration from the University of Kansas. • 1987: Elected to Kansas House. • 1993: Becomes first Democrat in over a century elected state insurance commissioner. • 2002: Elected governor of Kansas.

"She had leadership qualities," recalls Sister Anna, now living at the Mount Notre Dame convent in Reading.

"I remember one day, when the French teacher left earlier than I expected and the classroom was without supervision. I returned to find Kathleen standing on top of the desk, shouting `Everybody sit down. Sister is coming back in a few minutes.' . . . She was able to get the children to do the right thing."

Ms. Sebelius laughs. She doesn't recall that story but her life was certainly simpler then. Today, her immediate challenges include a budget shortfall estimated by at $255 million.

Her dad knows the feeling. When he moved into the Ohio governor's mansion in 1971, he inherited a deficit from predecessor Jim Rhodes. He pushed a state personal income tax through the legislature to alleviate it.

It came with a political price, as many taxes do. In his re-election bid, he was defeated by 11,488 votes - out of nearly 3 million cast - by Mr. Rhodes.

His advice is both paternal and political, Mr. Gilligan says from his Clifton home. "The gist of it is, she'll be dealing head-on with the legislature. Part of their job is to defend the interests of their districts.

"But there's only one person in our system of government who represents all the people all the time."

The governor.

Many similarities

One advantage: Ms. Sebelius has been on the other side. She served four terms in the Kansas House of Representatives from 1987-1994.

"I think Kansans are very much like Cincinnatians," she says. "They lean toward Republican views, although open to issues that cross party lines."

Geographically, however, much is different.

The Gilligan family in an undated photo: Katie and John and children Ellen, Kathleen, John and Donald. (Enquirer file photo) | ZOOM |

To the east of Topeka, the sloping landscape is interrupted by industry and academia, clear to Kansas City. On a bluff overlooking the Missouri River in Atchison, is the childhood home of famous aviator Amelia Earhart. A few miles south is Leavenworth federal penitentiary.

To the west of Topeka, wheat and cattle dominate the flat horizon. Dodge City is out there along with oil fields and the childhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower in Abilene.

It's still a bit hardscrabble "old-west."

And now comes a Democrat to lead the two worlds of Kansas, a state where Democrats represent a mere 28 percent of registered voters.

"It's terribly exciting," Mr. Gilligan says of the Jan. 13 inauguration. He'll be there, along with a dozen other Cincinnati-area relatives. "I have some understanding of the complexities of government, and finally being lucky enough to get to the top of the thing.

"She's a natural leader," he says. "Thank God I never had to run against her."

His daughter returns the affection. "I don't think if I hadn't admired and liked what I saw him doing, I would have ever considered this for myself," she said.

And even if she did ... Kansas?

That answer goes back to her ability to appeal to the state's moderate Republican voters seeking change, her opposition to school-funding cuts, a Republican running mate, and the political brand-name of her husband Gary Sebelius, son of respected former Kansas GOP Congressman Keith Sebelius.

It also goes back to Summit Country Day, class of '66.

Ms. Sebelius, then senior Kathleen Gilligan, was the self-described "jock" who shined on the basketball court, where she was team captain, and in field hockey.

"There's a lot, I think, about sports overall, that can be used as an important life lesson," she says. "There's competition, it teaches a lot about endurance, not giving up, sportsmanship, basic overcoming adversity."

She was school president in eighth grade at Summit, and later excelled in debate in American government class.

"The sister," recalls classmate Kathy Wagner, "she always liked us to take an issue and debate it."

Ms. Wagner was Kathy Pohl of Anderson Township then. She and the congressman's daughter were two of just 31 girls in their graduating class.

Ms. Wagner is now a Symmes Township trustee and president of the Hamilton County Townships Association.

"Kathy was a very good debater," she says with a slight laugh. "And I always took the opposite side. She was very articulate, and she knew her facts."

Schools an issue

And she knew the facts in 2002: Her Republican opponent, state Treasurer Tim Shallenburger, had alienated moderate voters - and many GOP insiders - by saying that Kansas' public schools "can do with one or two or three percent less funding."

Buoyed by a $4 million campaign fund that nearly doubled her opponent's, she hammered away on the school-funding issue.

She successfully fended off Shallenburger ads portraying her as too liberal for Kansas. Those ads didn't fly, in part, because during her two terms as state insurance commissioner in the 1990s, Ms. Sebelius cut department costs by 20 percent with little impact on the public, she says.

And she'd earned her blue Kansas stripes. She had a master's degree in public administration from the University of Kansas, and has raised two sons there.

She won with 53 percent of the vote. The honeymoon got a jolt earlier this month, however, when she was sued by 14 media agencies, including 11 newspapers, claiming closed meetings of her government-review teams should be open to the public. She countered that to do so would limit frank discussions. To support her claim that she values openness and public input, she points out that a toll-free number and e-mail address for Kansans' suggestions have received 1,600 responses so far.

Like her father did, she succeeds a Republican. Her predecessor, Bill Graves, was limited to two consecutive terms and for some voters the choice of a Democrat was surprising. She becomes the first Democrat to win an open governor's race in Kansas in 66 years.

"I couldn't believe that Kansas had elected a Democrat," University of Kansas junior Dan Stucky, 21, said recently as he walked outside KU's storied Allen Fieldhouse basketball arena. "I was like, `Wow.' A lot of people were."

She'll become just the fifth Democratic governor in Kansas since 1940. Of Kansas' 44 governors, including her: 32 were Republicans, 10 Democrats, two Populists.

She's also just the second female governor here.

She's broken political ground before. When Mrs. Sebelius served consecutive four-year terms as the state insurance commissioner, she was the first Democrat to hold that office in more than a century.

7-0 record

The governor-elect knows well a politician's life. She's never lost an election and November brought her record to 7-0.

When she was 5, her dad ran for the first of six two-year terms as Cincinnati city councilman.

"From the time I was about 5," Ms. Sebelius said, "he was in political office so the cycle in our household involved campaigns, it involved him being in the newspaper on a regular basis."

Her youth involved school class trips to council chambers at city hall where her dad worked. She spent election autumns going yard-to-yard with her family, putting up signs heralding her father's candidacy.

Martha (Foley) Helmick of the East End, also of the class of '66, says she was hardly surprised by Ms. Sebelius' rise in politics, and remembers attending charity carnivals in the Gilligans' side yard as a kid.

"I think it was expected that she did well," Ms. Helmick said.

At 14, she watched her dad lose a tough campaign for Ohio congressman-at-large. Two years later, in 1964, her dad won a seat in Congress, representing Ohio's first district. It was the first race in which she actively participated.

"Actually, most of what's done in a campaign can be done by a 6-year-old," she says, laughing. "A lot of mailings and phone calls and get-out-the-vote efforts, are pretty easy to be directly involved in. It's not back in a laboratory making slides or something."

Just after high school graduation in 1966, she watched her father lose a re-election bid to Robert Taft Jr., father of the current Ohio governor.

"I learned a lot of practical lessons about campaigns themselves," she reflects. "How much it hurts to lose an election, what kind of fun you can have and what kind of interesting places you can go on a campaign trail."

As a student at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., she hit the road in her father's successful 1970 campaign for governor of Ohio.

"There's always a lot of activity involving, if the candidate can't make it here, can you go?" she says. "Showing up. My older brother and I kind of liked that, the appearance side of the campaign."

"I think some of that direct campaigning certainly was helpful to me in later life."

Her most important appearance back in the Buckeye State occurred in 1974, when she and fellow child of politics, Gary Sebelius, were married at the governor's mansion.

"I really wasn't there during his administration," she says of Mr. Gilligan's time as governor, "so in terms of how my service as governor will parallel his service as governor, what happens that will be similar will mostly be accidental."

One thing doesn't seem so accidental.

Her older son, Ned, actively campaigned for her. (Her younger son, John, graduated from high school this year.)

Ned Sebelius is 21, the same age she was when she got on her dad's campaign trail to Columbus.

"And he would come back from a parade in southeast Kansas or an event and it would trigger ..." she said, stopping in mid-sentence. "His descriptions of someone coming up to him and saying, `Oh, you're Kathleen's son.' I think, `Oh, I know exactly how that is.' "

E-mail toneill@enquirer.com