Kaine's Wife Puts Career On Hold for Higher Profile
Holton Focuses On Foster Care

By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 25, 2008; B01

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."

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.