Hoping to expand on his advantage with women voters, presidential candidate Barack Obama Thursday enlisted the help of two prominent Wisconsin backers of his Democratic primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to sell his economic plan as a boon for working women.

"I'm delighted that Sen. Obama is narrowing his focus on how we can position women to succeed, knowing that businesses will profit and the state economy and national economy will grow if we get this right," said Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton, who backed Clinton until her loss in a bitter primary battle, but is now solidly in the Obama camp.

In a conference call organized by Obama's Wisconsin campaign Thursday, Lawton joined U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin and others to laud Obama's plans to improve the economic status of women, only a day before the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, U.S. Sen. John McCain, heads to politically divided western Wisconsin for an all-women town hall meeting. McCain is scheduled to speak on the challenges confronting businesswomen Friday at J&L Steel Erectors in Hudson, just west of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The area is seen as essential to the candidates' quest to capture the state's 10 electoral votes.

The battle for women voters is shaping up as one of the key elements of the presidential campaign between the two presumptive major party nominees. In Wisconsin, according to a Qunnipiac University poll in June, women voters back Obama by 53 percent to 37 percent, a 16-point margin, compared with a 13-point lead overall.

Lawton hailed Obama's plans to boost the economic status of women while Baldwin focused her comments on McCain.

"The central component of Sen. McCain's economic plan is to give $300 billion more in tax cuts to big corporations and multimillionaires, and less than a quarter of this will benefit, broadly speaking, the middle class," she said.

McCain spokeswoman Leah Yoonsaid that during McCain's visit toHudson on Friday he willnot just address business concerns, but also pocketbookissues that affectfamilies.

"Sen. McCain has a long record of supporting all women," she said. "In the current economic stuggle he's made it clear he's putting families first."

McCain favors a mix of corporate and individual tax cuts, including making permanent the tax cuts put in place by President George W. Bush and cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, implementing a gas tax holiday and balancing the budget by the end of his first term.

Obama's plan includes tax cuts of $500 for individuals -- including 71 million working women nationwide and 1.5 million in Wisconsin -- and $1,000 per family. The plan also extends tax breaks for child care, expands the Medical Leave Act to provide a week of paid sick leave and doubles funding for after-school learning programs.

Obama also wants to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011 and index it for inflation, provide affordable health care, and automatically enroll people in portable retirement savings accounts if they don't get retirement accounts through their employers, all of which Lawton said will help women overcome the pay disparities they now suffer.

Lawton said the child care tax breaks alone would give $2,000 to a working mother with two children and would benefit 129,000 working women in Wisconsin. She said child care consistently ranks as the top concern for women trying to hold down a job.

"This is essential to us as we look at how we're going to maintain stability and look for growth in our workforce," she said.

Obama said he intends to work toward closing the gender gap, which he said has women earning 77 cents on every $1 earned by men. And he has blasted McCain for not supporting a law that could have helped close the gap.

This spring, Obama backed a Senate bill, which McCain opposed, that would have made it easier for women to sue employers for pay discrimination. The bill was in response to a Supreme Court ruling limiting the time period employees have to file a discrimination lawsuit.

Both candidates this week are sharpening their rhetoric to highlight their differences on both economic and social issues as they relate to women, one of the most salient being their positions on abortion.

"I will never back down in defending a woman's right to choose," Obama told a Women for Obama breakfast fundraiser in Manhattan Thursday, also attended by Clinton. McCain has gone on record saying he would appoint conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito in an effort to overturn the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

While Obama campaign leaders in Wisconsin focused on the economy Thursday, Lawton said the abortion issue directly impacts economic issues that affect women.

"What women voters do know, and men who know how important they are to our economy, is that the whole issue of pay equity, and women being paid less than their value, comes from the issue of women having control of their reproductive cycle," she said. "So access to the full complement of necessary reproductive health care is an economic issue for our nation. And yes, women get it and that will be very important to them as they go to the polls."