WILLIAMSBURG, Va. -- She wore a yellow ribbon.
More than anything else, that strip of colored cloth dangling from Ellen R. Sauerbrey's name tag defines her place within the strict pecking order of the Republican Governors Conference here.
Governors and governors-elect get white ribbons. Yellow is for staffers and other lesser mortals.
Mrs. Sauerbrey is the odd woman out at this week's GOP gathering, a giddy celebration of what party leaders are calling the century's greatest midterm election sweep.
To the surprise of some Republicans, Mrs. Sauerbrey accepted an invitation to attend the three-day meeting here of more than two dozen GOP governors and winning gubernatorial candidates. Most of the governors-elect came directly from a session in West Virginia for new governors of both parties, which Gov.-elect Parris N. Glendening attended; Mrs. Sauerbrey was not invited.
The Maryland entourage (Mrs. Sauerbrey and a single aide) is the smallest here. And she has spent much of her time on the phone with her lawyers, monitoring developments back home about her struggle to overturn the election results in the Maryland governor's race.
That effort broadened yesterday when Sauerbrey forces notified the Baltimore elections board that they intend to examine registration and Election Day paperwork for everyone who voted in Baltimore Nov. 8.
Mrs. Sauerbrey's refusal to give up, after a count that left her 5,400 votes behind statewide, has put Republican officials in a somewhat awkward spot.
They welcomed her to Williamsburg, on the theory that the Maryland election result is not yet official. They let her attend private governors-only meetings and dinners and even listed her in the conference agenda as a governor-elect.
During yesterday's plenary sessions, she sat around the same U-shaped table as the current GOP governors and governors-to-be -- seated, alphabetically, between Gov.-elect Bill Graves of Kansas and Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts.
Mrs. Sauerbrey scribbled notes on a pad while listening to guest speakers analyze the mood of the American electorate ("Feds wasting too much," she wrote. "Criminals being let out," "frivolous lawsuits," "pork").
But while she was placed prominently in the same group as the state executives, she was not exactly of it. The place card at her seat was the only one with neither the title "Governor" nor "Governor-elect.'
Asked about the propriety of assigning her a seat alongside the governors, Haley Barbour, the Republican national chairman, begged the question. "That's where they put her," he said.
If there were objections from the governors about her presence here, no one was saying so publicly.
"Anybody who's got a problem with that's got an ego problem," Gov.-elect David Beasley of South Carolina said with a laugh.
Several speakers referred obliquely to her plight, though not to her name. Next year, Mr. Barbour noted in his keynote address, Republicans will have "at least 30" governors (she would be the 31st).
But as she listened to a lengthy dissection of the party's successes, certain remarks appeared to cut deep. The woman who would be governor sighed when the GOP chairman declared that the party's "road to victory" had been "paved with unity."
In an interview, Mrs. Sauerbrey denied feeling uncomfortable "at all" about her role here.
"Virtually everyone here is wishing me well," she said. "Obviously, the Republican governors are hoping that I'm going to be joining them in the future."
She said her presence sent a message that "the party is supporting me until such time that this issue is resolved." She said she could not predict when that might be.
"I would not be here if I was about to give this thing up," she added. "From my perspective, the issue is not is Ellen Sauerbrey in denial or is Ellen Sauerbrey being a gracious loser. The issue on my part is the election process and the integrity of the election process."