Thompson and Baldwin debate on Oct. 26 in Milwaukee. A quiet, history-making Senate bid

APPLETON, Wis. — Tammy Baldwin could soon become the first openly gay United States senator. But you wouldn’t know it watching her deadlocked race against Republican Tommy Thompson.

She doesn’t talks about it unless asked, which hardly ever happens. Thompson’s campaign has steered clear, with the exception of an aide’s tweet that landed him in hot water. There’ve been no TV ads or mailings — positive or negative — and the issue hasn’t surfaced in either of the first two debates.


“It almost never comes up,” the seven-term Democratic congresswoman told POLITICO in an interview.

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The collective yawn over Baldwin’s sexual orientation raises the notion of whether gay candidates have crossed a threshold of mainstream acceptance that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. It was only in 2006, after all, that Wisconsinites overwhelmingly voted to enshrine a gay marriage ban in the state constitution.

“The way society is changing, it’s not a big deal,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist and lobbyist who is also a major player in Washington’s gay and lesbian community. “It’s the new normal. In more states, it’s becoming less and less an issue.”

Retiring Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank said attitudes in even more conservative parts of the country are changing rapidly.

“A very large number of voters now know that they have a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender friend, cousin, doctor or teacher,” said Frank, who came out of the closet in 1987 after he had been elected to Congress. “So it’s much tougher to be anti-LGBT without pissing people off.”

Frank said when Obama administration officials approached him earlier this year to assess the political risk of endorsing gay marriage, he told them, “It’d be zero.” And as it has turned out, gay marriage has been virtually absent as an issue in the presidential campaign.

A Public Policy Polling survey taken in August found that 64 percent of Wisconsin voters were open to supporting a gay candidate for office, while 23 percent said they were not.

Still, some gay advocates are privately skittish that Baldwin’s poll numbers might be inflated slightly by people who won’t vote for her because of her sexual orientation but tell a pollster differently because they don’t want to sound homophobic. The worry is about a variation of the so-called Bradley effect — named after Tom Bradley, the African-American former Los Angeles mayor who lost his 1982 bid for California governor after exit polling indicated he had won.

A similar concern was aired in 2008 when Barack Obama was on the ballot, but it turned out to be unfounded. Frank dismissed the idea that Baldwin could be hurt by it, saying any voter who is leery of the Democrat because of her private life wasn’t going to vote for her, anyway.

Thompson said in an interview that voters “are concerned” about Baldwin’s sexual orientation but that his campaign is not making an issue of it. He said he doesn’t know how it will affect the outcome.

As a Senate contender, Baldwin is the most high-profile of nine openly gay candidates running as major-party nominees for Congress this year.

Inside the tight-knit national gay donor community, her bid is an utmost priority and source of tremendous pride. The Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund alone has helped raise and bundle more than $1.5 million for Baldwin’s campaign, according to a source close to the group.

Yet Baldwin isn’t branding herself as someone on the cusp of making history. Her stump speech and ad campaign focus relentlessly on jobs, the economy and her opponent.

And mindful of the delicate politics involved, Baldwin’s allies are just fine with that.

She’s already the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to Congress, founder of the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus and sponsor of both landmark hate crime legislation and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. To her supporters, Baldwin’s 14-year-record on issues that matter to the gay and lesbian community is beyond reproach.

“Her obligation has been discharged by her courageous advocacy for years,” said Frank.

Still, the sharp-tongued congressman readily acknowledged that while he doesn’t believe being an openly gay candidate is any longer a liability, there’s not much upside to talking about it on the trail.

“In a campaign, you’re trying to get votes. How would that help her get votes? You should never lie, but you choose to talk about the issues that will get you votes,” Frank said. “How often has Barack Obama talked about being black or Mitt Romney talked about being a Mormon?”

Baldwin said simply that she wants to spend her time talking about what’s on the minds of voters.

“I think it speaks much more to the very serious challenges our nation faces and the fact that the voters are focused squarely on that,” she said. “I open up to Q & A and they ask me questions and I answer them and this just hasn’t come up on the campaign trail.”

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), an openly gay member of Congress first elected in 2008, echoed that sentiment.

“I can probably count on one hand the amount of time equality issues have even come up in a town hall,” he said. “Obviously there are people who are gay who care about it, but it’s way down on the list.”

Even GOProud, a conservative gay rights group supporting Thompson, saluted Baldwin for making the possibility of an openly gay U.S. senator realistic.

“Unfortunately, [she] is just the wrong candidate to achieve that milestone. She’s just too liberal for Wisconsin,” said GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia.

There have been flashes of anti-gay sentiment in the campaign.

In July, a 70-year-old retiree confessed to Baldwin, “I’m not sure how to deal with your situation of who you love and who your partner is,” according to the Associated Press.

The Washington Times’ Jeffrey Kuhner penned a column earlier this month titled, “Radical Lesbian Knocking On Senate Door,” in which he claimed Baldwin would seek to advance “the destructive sexual revolution of the 1960s.”

In September, a Thompson aide sent a tweet showing video of Baldwin dancing at a gay pride festival, with the accompanying message, “Clearly, there’s no one better positioned to talk ‘heartland values’ than Tammy.”

Thompson later apologized, telling reporters that Baldwin’s sexual orientation is “absolutely not an issue.”

But in an interview, Thompson hedged on that question when pressed whether it is a factor in the race, which is within the margin of error in most polls.

“We don’t know if it’s cutting either way and we don’t even know if anybody knows,” he replied, before an aide interjected that the former governor has run an issue-based campaign.

“I think people are concerned about it, we’ve just have not made it an issue,” Thompson continued. “I don’t know what they’re concerned about, but we know it’s still an issue.”

Thompson declined to elaborate. But his answer hinted that the former governor believes that just because voters may not want to talk about their unease with a Baldwin’s sexual orientation, doesn’t mean they aren’t wrestling with it.

But the tilt in the country in favor of gay rights has pushed any outward vitriol under the public radar.

“Anti-gay groups have generally gotten smarter about employing open bigotry in opposing gay candidates at the federal level, because they realize it doesn’t sell anymore and can even backfire. You’ll see more subtle tactics sometimes, especially at the end of close races,” said the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund’s Denis Dison.

Baldwin is locked in one of those races and it remains to be seen whether her opposition will resort to such late underhanded attacks.

But the transformative message her election would send is not lost on her.

“If I’m successful in this election, there are going to be young people across this country, maybe just coming out in a more hostile community or family that isn’t accepting them, wondering whether they can fulfill their aspirations professionally,” she said. “And it’ll be one more example of, ‘Yes, you can.’”