She is a Democratic governor in a Republican state.
She is elegant, athletic and strikingly attractive.
And Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has friends with connections.
These circumstances came together early one morning in December when a photographer and a crew of stylists descended upon the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka.
The results from that day are featured in the February issue of Vogue magazine.
Wearing a taffeta gown by Oscar de la Renta, Sebelius poses with ease in the Kansas State Senate chamber before “The Spirit of Kansas” mural George Stone painted in the early 1900s. A Carolina Herrera satin wrap is draped nearby. A second photo shows Sebelius seated with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Colorado first lady Jeannie Ritter at a White House state dinner last February.
The story, under the headline “Altered States,” also includes another female governor — Alaska’s Sarah Palin, a Republican gaining a reputation for battling waste and corruption.
Sebelius’ Vogue appearance came about through a friend, Lloyd Birdwell of Mission Hills, Kan., and Dallas. Birdwell’s cousin is Laurie Jones, Vogue’s managing editor. Birdwell says he had been telling Jones about the governor for some time.
Meanwhile, Sebelius attracted the national spotlight as chair of the Democratic Governors Association, and the party recently invited her to deliver the reply to President Bush’s Monday night State of the Union address.
Writer John Powers describes Sebelius as “elegant, circumspect … and strikingly fit.” She likes to play golf and tennis, sail, scuba dive and jog (often while listening to the Dixie Chicks). She told Powers her two sons say that “going on vacation with me is like going to sports camp.”
Earlier this month she described the day with Vogue as a “truly memorable experience — beautiful clothes right off the runway, lots of folks to fuss with hair and makeup, and I will never look at my office and the Senate chamber quite the same way without remembering an extraordinary day at the Capitol.”
