WASHINGTON - The names of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt have surfaced as possible candidates to become U.S. Secretary of Transportation in the Obama Administration.

Three other possible candidates are Wisconsin Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi, former Deputy Transportation Secretary Mortimer Downey and Jane Garvey, the former head of the Federal Aviation Administration. Both Downey and Garvey are members of the Obama USDOT transition team.

At the same time, a group of influential California Democrats is making a strong push to have Obama name a regional public transit official, Steve Heminger, his transportation secretary.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is leading a group of officials who sent a letter to Obama endorsing Heminger, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The goal of the letter was to push Heminger past the other candidates.

Gephardt served as a congressman from Missouri from 1977-2005. Since his retirement from politics, he has been working as a senior counsel at the global law firm DLA Piper and is a consultant for Goldman Sachs.

Sebelius was elected governor in November 2002 and re-elected in 2006.

She was preceded by former Kansas Gov. Bill Graves, who is now president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations.

Downey, a USDOT deputy secretary in the Clinton administration, currently is chairman of PB Consult Inc., a firm which specializes in putting together public-private partnerships for transportation projects. He also has served as chairman of the Coalition for Americas Gateways and Trade Corridors, and is part of a three-man independent review panel charged with evaluating the USDOTs ongoing NAFTA trucking demonstration program with Mexico.

Garvey currently is on the board at The MITRE Corp., a not-for-profit organization chartered to work in the public interest, where she is an executive vice president and chairman of the transportation practice.