Fickle Wisconsin Sends Tammy Baldwin, Trusty Progressive, to Senate MADISON, Wis. - Her state, just two years ago, elected a darling of the Tea Party to the Senate, displacing a Democratic mainstay. When the conservative governor, Scott Walker, stripped most state workers of bargaining rights, voters here rejected an effort to recall him from office. And in 2006, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman passed with the support of a clear majority of Wisconsinites - the same electorate that on Tuesday voted for Representative Tammy Baldwin, making her the country's first openly gay senator. Ms. Baldwin's hard-fought victory, in a bruising, $65 million race against a popular Republican opponent, was a testament to the unorthodox politics of a state whose ideological swings can, to outside observers, evoke whiplash. But it was also a striking affirmation of Ms. Baldwin, 50, a soft-spoken but unflinching seven-term congresswoman who won over voters in her native state without moderating the starkly progressive views - including lonely votes against the invasion of Iraq and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that curbed commercial banks - that routinely rank her among the most liberal lawmakers in the country. She has played down the historic nature of her win, befitting a race where Ms. Baldwin's sexual orientation played little role. At her victory speech here on Tuesday, Ms. Baldwin did not get around to talking about it until halfway through, saying she was "well aware" that her victory was a milestone for gay rights. After the enormous applause - the loudest of the night - died down, she added: "But I didn't run to make history. I ran to make a difference. The flush of victory still seemed fresh for Ms. Baldwin during an interview on Thursday at her Madison office. Walking into a conference room, her eyebrows shot up at the site of an elaborate spray of flowers, a congratulatory gift from a supporter. "I hadn't seen that yet," she said, a bit surprised. Her new title, senator-elect, remains foreign to her. "It still perks my ears up whenever I hear somebody say that," she said. It was this self-effacing demeanor that helped Ms. Baldwin win over voters outside Dane County, the liberal enclave where she grew up and built her political career. Elected to the county Board of Supervisors at 24, she made her way to the State Assembly, and later to Congress, being elected Wisconsin's first female representative in 1998. In Washington, Ms. Baldwin proved iconoclastic, once co-sponsoring a bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, and influential: she championed the provision of President Obama's health care law that allows young adults to remain on their parents" insurance plans until age 26. But she began her Senate bid as the underdog, facing a centrist former governor, Tommy G. Thompson, who was on a first-name basis with many voters. The race was soon dubbed "Tommy vs. Tammy." Ms. Baldwin built support farm by farm, trudging through potato fields, armed with a maternal smile and a touch of down-home lilt. It was the type of outreach she has pursued since her days on the student council at Van Hise Middle School in Madison. As an eighth grader, Ms. Baldwin mediated a dispute between a neighbor of the school and students who were trampling her flower bed. The bipartisan solution: a fence. "It was the first time I had this spark that one person could make a difference," Ms. Baldwin recalled on Thursday, as the sun glinted off a blue sliver of Lake Monona in the background. Tammy Suzanne Green Baldwin was born in Madison, in 1962, to a 19-year-old mother, a college student in the midst of a divorce. She was raised by her grandparents, a scientist and a costume designer, seeing her mother, who became active in the civil rights movement, on weekends. Ms. Baldwin came out, privately, as a college student at Smith, where she was deeply inspired by Harvey Milk, the gay rights activist killed in 1978. She identified publicly as a lesbian in 1986 in The Wisconsin State Journal, Madison's newspaper, encouraged by a friend. "I was quite nervous about it," she recalled, although the reception was positive, save for a single crank call. "It was one of the most freeing days of my life," she said. She is not shy. Her Congressional Web site includes a 3,528-word question-and-answer section, where Ms. Baldwin expounds on her upbringing, the challenges of coming out and her favorite books, broken down by subject and age (childhood: Dr. Seuss; college: Plato). She also wades into more philosophical matters, writing that women can be "passively discouraged from entering politics by the subtle messages that society sends." Passivity did not prove a problem as her Senate race heated up. In a state whose progressive forefather, Robert La Follette, carried the nickname Fighting Bob, Ms. Baldwin paired her amiable presence with brass-knuckle attacks against Mr. Thompson, who emerged weakened from a tough primary. The candidates traded increasingly nasty barbs, which ran nonstop on television. "I wasn't naïve," said Ms. Baldwin, who volunteered no qualms about the race's brutishness. It was important, she added, "for Wisconsin to have a fighter in the Senate." Reflecting on her victory, Ms. Baldwin said she saw no contradictions in Wisconsin's seesawing political rhythms. But is it strange for a state that passed an initiative against gay marriage to elect a gay senator? "I suspect," she said, "we might have had a different outcome had that initiative been on the ballot in 2012, not 2006."