[1] Vinehout directed both the graduate and undergraduate programs in health administration at the University of Illinois at Springfield, serving for ten years.

[6] Vinehout was president of the Dairy Herd Improvement Association in Buffalo County, Wisconsin, for several years and represented the district at statewide meetings.

[10] Vinehout was the chair of the Democratic Party of Buffalo County and served on the Mississippi River Regional Planning Commission and the Alma Chamber of Commerce.

[16] Before she was elected into the State Senate, her family was without health care for a couple years when her son required an emergency appendectomy.

[18] She favors creating a Wisconsin-based market-place for health care, which would keep coverage and prices in the state relatively stable even if funding from the federal government were to lag.

[19]" In her alternative budget, she eliminates corporate tax breaks and cash payments and uses that money to pay for public education.

[18] Her alternative budget also includes replacing the money current Governor Walker cut from the University of Wisconsin system over his eight years in office and investing an additional $100 million in needs-based financial aid.

[18] She was also a member of the Wisconsin 14 who left the state to protest Governor Walker's contentious Act 10 bill that eliminated collective bargaining for teachers.

She has called for restoring funding of the Department of Natural Resources, rehiring scientists, seriously addressing the threat of climate change, and stronger environmental protections, especially of sand mines and CAFOs.

[25] She also believes it is necessary to restore the advisory organizations that have been disbanded, especially the Board of Veterans Affairs committees that deal with program review, legislation, long term care, and financing.

Vinehout insists on a $15 an hour minimum wage, changing Truth in Sentencing standards, offering treatment alternatives to prison, providing mental health services, improving inner city public schools, and expanding home ownership.

She believes that President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing holds the steps toward building trust between our citizens and law enforcement.

[26] In 2009, Planned Parenthood revoked its endorsement of Kathleen when she authored an amendment to a reproductive rights bill that was designed to ensure access to birth control.

Sen. Vinehout claimed that such language violated the Wisconsin constitution, which states that no "control of, or interference with, the rights of conscience be permitted [27]" and authored an amendment to the bill that allowed pharmacists to conscientiously object as long as they ensured that the patient would be able to receive the abortion drugs.