Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas, 2003-2009
Kathleen Sebelius, governor of Kansas, 2003-2009. Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 40 (Winter 2017–2018): 262-289 262 Kansas History “Find a Way to Find Common Ground”: A Conversation with Former Governor Kathleen Sebelius edited by Bob Beatty and Linsey Moddelmog athleen Mary (Gilligan) Sebelius, born May 15, 1948, in Cincinnati, Ohio, served as the State of Kansas’s forty-fourth chief executive from January 13, 2003, to April 28, 2009, when she resigned to serve in President Barack Obama’s cabinet as secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Sebelius rose to the governorship after serving in the Kansas House of Representatives from 1987 to 1995 and serving two terms as Kansas insurance commissioner from 1995 to 2003. She was the first insurance commissioner from the Democratic Party in Kansas history, defeating Republican Kincumbent Ron Todd in 1994, 58.6 percent to 41.4 percent. She ran for reelection in 1998 and easily defeated Republican challenger Bryan Riley, 59.9 to 40.1 percent. In the 2002 gubernatorial race, Sebelius defeated Republican state treasurer Tim Shallenburger, 52.9 to 45.1 percent. She won reelection in 2006 by a vote of 57.9 to 40.4 percent against her Republican challenger, state senator Jim Barnett.1 Sebelius never lost an election to public office in Kansas.2 Sebelius’s 2002 gubernatorial victory marked the first and only father-daughter pair to serve as governors in the United States. Her father, John Gilligan, was Democratic governor of Ohio from 1971 to 1975. Sebelius’s gubernatorial leadership style was one of bipartisanship, as her Democratic Party was always in the minority in the state legislature.
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