With Wisconsin having just endured a bruising battle over union rights to collectively bargain in the state -- along with hard-fought recall campaigns against state senators who supported their repeal -- the political culture in this swingiest of swing states, population five and a half million, is even more divided than usual. That creates a perfect opening for a candidate like Baldwin, who is firmly on one side of the political divide. And that's what she'll most likely be attacked for too, by an emboldened conservative movement that has successfully beat back liberal organizing attempts in the Badger State.

Eric Ostermeier, a political scientist who writes for the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs' Smart Politics blog, says can't imagine anyone attacking Baldwin as a lesbian, "unless people use that as proxy for how liberal she is." That's an entertaining twist on the old code attack of "San Francisco liberal" -- which once stood in for everything gay.

In fact, every one of more than a dozen people interviewed said that any focus on Baldwin's sexual orientation would backfire, no matter who's doing the emphasizing, or why. "Whose votes would that change?" one observer asked me, not for attribution. "The religious right -- were they going to vote for her anyway? I just don't see it getting anyone anywhere." But if she's promoted as a potential historic "first," that could turn voters away, since voters are looking to elect a senator from Wisconsin to help them through their tough economic times, rather than to make a social statement.

Should she win, Baldwin would not be the first openly LGBT candidate to win a statewide office, though none have won top political jobs and none have won statewide seats in the Midwest. According to Denis Dison of The Victory Fund, an LGBT version of Emily's List, six people have won posts that required victory outside of gay enclaves or liberal districts -- and all in states at the country's edges. Kevin Lembo is Connecticut's current state comptroller; Ed Flanagan was Vermont's state auditor. Oregon now has three elected-while-out officials, with Kate Brown as current secretary of state, and Virginia Linder and Rives Kistler now on the Oregon Supreme Court. Meanwhile, in Hawaii, transgendered Kim Coco Iwamoto won a statewide election to be Commisioner of Education.

But the two biggest statewide prizes -- governor and U.S. senator -- have yet to be won by anyone openly gay. The key word, of course, is "open." Perhaps the most notably "closed" official was former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, a heterosexually married man who resigned in 2004 when he was forced to admit he was having an affair with a man. (Do not doubt that there are more, keeping their loves quiet.) But if Baldwin succeeds, a new barrier to LGBT full political participation will have fallen.