During a press conference on disaster preparedess month (holiday greetings, by the way), Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius fielded a few questions on her fellow governor, Sarah Palin.

You can expect to see Sebelius this fall on the campaign trail as a surrogate for Obama - and maybe more so if the Obama camp sees her and other female supporters as counterweights to Palin's popularity.

Sebelius said she's not worried about Palin picking off women voters - or men voters for that matter - from Obama.

"I am optimistic that women voters and men voters are really looking for a new direction and think there’s a great opportunity to contrast John McCain and Barack Obama, and that’s what will go on.

"Certainly there’s an initial excitement about having a woman on the ticket. It's a novelty... the Democrats had a female on the ticket 24 years ago. That will get an amount of attention, but at the bottom line, I think voters male and female will be looking at who is going to lead this country,

what direction they’re going to take us.

She said issues like jobs, the economy, health care, children and education will control the election, not the gender of the candidates.

Asked whether a female on the ticket is really a "novelty," she said it's still seen that way in some places.

"Kansas is sort of used to this," she said, noting that women have been elected at just about every level in Kansas, including U.S. House, Senate and statewide offices. She said that when she was first elected in 2002, only 13 women had ever served as governor of any state.