Kaine's Wife Puts Career On Hold for Higher Profile

Several U.S. governors are married to judges, including Maryland's Martin O'Malley (D), whose wife, Catherine Curran O'Malley, is an associate judge in Baltimore District Court. Unlike Holton, however, O'Malley did not step down from her post when her husband became governor.

Holton knew early on that she would quit her job if her husband became governor, her father said.

"It wasn't easy for her to leave a job that she loved, but because of prior experience with another governor and another first lady, she knew of the wonderful opportunities that were available in that position," Linwood Holton said. "It was a bittersweet thing."

Among her initial priorities as first lady was to push for broad-based changes to the foster care system, whose flaws became obvious to her during her years as a juvenile court judge, she said.

According to statistics compiled as part of Holton's initiative, Virginia lags other states in its ability to help foster children find permanent homes. The problem is especially acute for teenagers; fewer than half of Virginia children who enter the system after age 12 find permanent homes.

With Holton's support, the General Assembly voted this year to increase payments to foster families and take steps to reduce the financial incentive for local governments to place children in group homes. The growth in monthly payments to families brings Virginia closer to the national average, though the payments remain among the lowest in the nation, state officials said.

Lawmakers also approved policies to keep more children with relatives and in their home communities.

"We're not doing a good enough job supporting biological families and attracting alternate families to take care of these children," Holton said. "Every child needs a connection with family."

Another bit of political freedom Holton said she has relished as first lady is the ability to campaign for her preferred presidential candidate. She shares some common ground with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), a former first lady who used her position in the White House to push for policy changes and is now running for president. But it was Obama who inspired Holton to step into the political fray.

Obama, who won Virginia's Feb. 12 primary, is "a very compelling individual" who is more likely to win a general election than Clinton, Holton said.

But part of the appeal was her family's history. In 1970, when other Southern leaders were resisting school desegregation, Linwood Holton made headlines by escorting his eldest daughter, Tayloe, to a predominantly black Richmond public school.

Anne Holton's eyes moistened as she spoke of the dramatic change that led her state -- once the capital of the Confederacy -- to overwhelmingly support a black man for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"I just can't tell you how emotional it is for me and for everybody in my family to think Virginia can seriously contemplate voting for a person of color at the national level," she said.