A member of the Republican Party, he was elected Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska in the 1930 election, serving with Democratic Governor Charles W. Bryan, brother of William Jennings Bryan. In his position as Lieutenant Governor, Metcalfe took advantage of Bryan's occasional absence from the state to play practical jokes, and in 1931 he established the office of Admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska, a humorous and effectively meaningless role which references the fact that Nebraska is the only triply landlocked U.S. state.