Altered States.(on women governors Kathleen Sebelius and Sarah Palin)

Byline: Photographed by Jonathan Becker

Two women governors--a Democrat in Kansas and a Republican in Alaska--are attracting national attention by breaking the mold at home.

kathleen sebelius

In a divisive election year, Kansas's fair broker transcends the culture wars. John Powers reports.

A light December snow has begun swirling through the streets of Washington, D.C., when Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius--her trademark sunflower brooch glittering--takes the dais in the Capital Hilton's Presidential Ballroom and smiles out over the annual holiday party of the Democratic Governors Association. She has every reason to look pleased. It's been a great year. Under her leadership, the DGA has raised more campaign money than expected. It now boasts 28 Democratic governors, more than half from states carried by George W. Bush in the last election. And 2008 looks even better.

"You are the backbone of the Democratic Governors," Sebelius tells the throng of corporate donors, social activists, and political consultants who look up at the assembled governors. Promising even more Democratic gains, she ends with a happy verdict: "The momentum continues!"

The Democrats certainly hope so. As the party learned so painfully in 2000 and 2004, there's just one sure thing in presidential politics: Winning only the so-called blue states is the road to election-day heartbreak. This year, the trick will be finding a way to hold on to those states while building up enough "Big Mo" (as the elder George Bush called it) to snatch at least a couple from the red column.

That's one reason why people have begun paying attention to the sleek, 59-year-old Sebelius, who was introduced at the DGA party as "the nation's leading expert on how red turns into blue." She won this emblematic accolade by being elected Democratic governor of a state so notorious for hard-core Republicanism that it became the subject of Thomas Frank's big best-seller, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America . Even more impressive, Sebelius got reelected in 2006--by a landslide. These days, party bigwigs joke that Sebelius is what's right with Kansas. Even Frank, who's as hard on most Democrats as he is on Republicans, tells me, "She's great stuff."

In person, the governor is elegant, circumspect (a trait Kansans approve), and strikingly fit. She loves to golf, scuba dive, play tennis, sail, and jog (this last while listening to the Dixie Chicks). Her athleticism amuses her sons--Ned, 26, currently earning a double degree in law and public policy from Georgetown and Harvard, and John, 23, an artist and entrepreneur who is launching his own company. "They say that going on vacation with me is like going to sports camp," she says, laughing. The roots of her political success, she tells me, lie in something simple: "Kansans like to think that their public officials share their values. They want to feel that you are more like than different from them." Of course, the trick is making them feel that way.

"She knows how to thread the needle in a place like Kansas," says Montana's boundlessly colorful governor, Brian Schweitzer, another Democrat hugely popular in a red state, who worked closely with her in the DGA. "She's able to present a message about the core values we have in the Democratic Party, and the people in Kansas, which is supposed to be a Republican state, go, 'We agree with that. We agree with that. And we agree with that '--right down the line. She's had more dang conversions than a travelin' preacher."

The party has taken notice. Back in 2004, Sebelius was touted as a possible running mate for John Kerry, but when that didn't…