Kaine's Wife Puts Career On Hold for Higher Profile

Holton Focuses On Foster Care

RICHMOND -- During her husband's campaign for governor, Anne Holton kept a low profile. She stayed home during fundraisers. She even peeled the Timothy M. Kaine bumper sticker off the family car before she went to work.

"There were times when I remember sending my children and my in-laws and my parents all off together to a campaign event," said Holton, 50, who was barred from endorsing any candidate, even her husband, as a judge on Richmond's Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. "I was brushing their hair and sending them out the door because I couldn't go with them."

Two years later, Holton -- who stepped down from the bench after Kaine (D) was elected in 2005 -- has gingerly stepped into the limelight, raising the profile of Virginia's first couple.

Earlier this year, as head of Virginia's Women for Obama group, she campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The U.S. senator from Illinois counts Kaine as one of his most steadfast supporters.

She has also pushed for changes in the state's foster care system. Partly because of her initiative "For Keeps," lawmakers voted this year to spend $26 million more over the next two years on foster care, including a nearly 25 percent increase in monthly payments to foster families.

The changes will be a significant improvement for the roughly 8,000 foster children in Virginia, said Therese Wolf, foster care program manager for the Virginia Department of Social Services. Equally important, Wolf said, is the attention the first lady's initiative has brought to the plight of foster care in Virginia.

"She has lent a level of visibility and awareness that we would not have if someone like her had not looked at this as an area of focus," Wolf said. "She's created something that will outlast her."

A high profile is not exactly new ground for Holton, a Princeton- and Harvard-educated lawyer who has spent much of her life in the public eye. Her father, A. Linwood Holton Jr. (R), served as Virginia's governor from 1970 to 1974. Before Kaine was elected to the same office, he was lieutenant governor and mayor of Richmond.

Speaking from a sitting room in the governor's mansion -- a room that had been part of the garage when she lived in the mansion as a teenager -- she said the more private life of a judge suited her for a time. Although judges are allowed to advocate some policy changes, they are not permitted to endorse candidates or engage in party politics.

"The first campaign, when Tim ran for lieutenant governor, it was kind of a convenient excuse," said Holton, a mother of three. "I had young children at home, a full-time job that I loved. And so to have time to be campaigning would have been hard."

But when Kaine decided to run for governor in 2005, "it got emotionally more challenging," she said.

"I frankly think it was one of the hardest things she ever did, not being able to participate," said Debbie Oswalt, executive director of the Virginia Health Care Foundation and a longtime friend. "I think she weighed whether to quit her job to do that, and they decided to be more practical about it."