Ireland Exiting

Secretary of State Betty Ireland, the first woman elected to West Virginia's executive branch, is leaving office later this month and spoke to The Associated Press about her tenure.

'It's not my main deal to stand up and be the women's rights advocate,'' she said. ''I am a women's rights advocate, but that's not what pushes me forward. I am here to do the job.''

The 63-year-old "is also keeping an eye to the future," the article notes. "Besides a long-postponed vacation with her husband - ''Neither of us has had more than a week off at a time in 20 years, probably,'' she said - Ireland expects to remain involved with the state's Republican Party."

"But Ireland's first post-office task is a tough one. She must settle the affairs of her parents, whose ailing health prompted her to sit out the 2008 election cycle as she cared for them," AP reports.