Barbara Lawton took office Jan. 6 as the first elected female lieutenant governor in the state of Wisconsin.

A lieutenant governor is next in line for the office of the governor if the acting governor is unable to perform his or her duties. This was the case in 2000 when Scott McCallum took over the office for Tommy Thompson, who accepted an appointment as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services.

“I think very highly of Lawton,” said former U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett. “I’ve known her for a number of years, and I think she brings a lot of class and energy to the position.”

Lawton said there was no routine in her day-to-day schedule.

“There are projects the governor has asked me to lead or be his designee on,” Lawton said. “But my greatest function is to meet with an endless stream of citizens who have specific concerns they would like to see government deal with.”

Since taking office, Lawton has been acquainting herself with issues facing the state. She has also worked to staff state programs.

Lawton said being the state’s first female lieutenant governor is significant because she can serve as an example for future generations and support legislation on women’s issues.

“To hold the second most prominent position in state government as a woman is to encourage more young women to imagine themselves in all positions of government,” Lawton said. “I didn’t grow up seeing myself doing that because there weren’t any women doing that at the time.”

Lawton said the current gender pay inequities have women earning 68 cents on every dollar a man makes.

“When 80 percent of the women in Wisconsin are part of the workforce — that’s the third-highest in the country — you have to have pay equity,” Lawton said. Lawton said pay equity would provide a natural boost to the economy by raising working women’s income.

“We have also looked at the silliness that prescription contraception is not covered by insurance agencies, but Viagra is,” Lawton said. “Some might say you can’t legislate things like that, but they have to remember that even mammograms were not covered by insurance until it was made the law.”

Lawton encouraged students to become active in political campaigns.

“It provides a real deepening of your sense of possibilities as a citizen,” Lawton said.

She believed her faith in the process of election is what motivates her to support campaign-finance-reform legislation. This session, Sen. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, is cosponsoring a finance-reform bill with Rep. Dean Kaufert, R-Neenah, in light of recent elections scandals. Also, Attorney General Peggy Lautenschlager has come out in support of the Impartial Justice initiative, which will provide full public funding of Supreme Court campaigns.

Lawton called the initiative “long overdue.”

“We have a Supreme Court race going on right now where unfortunately many campaign contributors are lawyers who will have business before the elected justices,” Lawton said. “If you were having someone argue your case, would you want to choose your lawyer based on contributions they made to a judicial campaign?”

Lawton received an undergraduate degree from Lawrence University and her master’s from the University of Wisconsin. Lawton spent a year in Mexico as part of her undergraduate work at Lawrence and a sabbatical year as she worked on her Ph.D. in Santiago, Chile. Lawton said she has personal pride in the state’s education system.

Governor Jim Doyle has said when he structures his budget plan, which he will present to the state Legislature Feb. 18, he will be reworking the way public education is funded because “currently funds are not distributed in a way that is most beneficial.”

“Under the last administration, state contributions to the university system followed a trajectory of decline,” Lawton said. “After the economic boom of the ’90s, what do we have to show for it in places that count, like increased accessibility to state universities?”

Lawton said graduates of the UW System are key to any economic recovery in the state, and that the university would not be exempt from tax cuts in Doyle’s upcoming budget plan.

“No one will escape some sort of cut, because we’re facing an unprecedented budget deficit,” Lawton said. Doyle has also said the UW System faces almost certain cuts.

“I think she should be thankful there is a Republican Legislature in place,” said Ben Krautkramer, first vice chairman of the College Republicans at UW. “Balancing the budget will be a lot less difficult than it would have been under the Chuck Chvala-led Democratic Legislature.”