Sen. Tammy Baldwin gives a victory speech Thursday at the Steamfitters Local 601 hall east of Madison after winning a third term Tuesday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

While a majority of Wisconsin voters helped elect Republican Donald Trump as president this week, one statewide candidate managed to defy the odds that favored the GOP.

Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin squeezed out enough votes to overtake Republican Eric Hovde and return to Washington, D.C. for a third term.

Although the victory was much narrower than her last reelection in 2018, the outcome preserved Baldwin’s winning streak.

“2024 marks a continuation of Tammy Baldwin’s record of undefeated elections,” Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said Thursday at a brief Baldwin victory celebration.

“The way we won this race is the way I’ve always approached this job,” a smiling Baldwin said in her 10-minute victory speech. “We did everything, everywhere, all at once. I traveled to red, blue, purple, rural, suburban, urban parts of our state. I listened to people. I really listen to people and then deliver for them, and in turn, these Wisconsinites showed up for me, and I’m so grateful.”

Baldwin is “uniquely good at cultivating her own brand and separating it from the national Democratic Party brand,” said Marquette University political scientist Julia Azari in an interview Thursday.

Democrats in Wisconsin often seem to do better in midterm elections, “where it is a little bit less nationalized and the candidates can cultivate their kind of personal and localized brands,” Azari said. “Baldwin has been pretty successful and she’s running ahead of Democrats statewide in a lot of contests.”

Baldwin got her political start on the Dane County Board, graduated to the Wisconsin Legislature and was elected to the U.S. House in 1998, the state’s first female and first gay member of Congress. After 14 years in the House, she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, the year Barack Obama won his second term.

In 2018, running against a Republican state senator, Leah Vukmir, Baldwin easily won reelection by nearly 11 points, while her fellow Democrat, Tony Evers, won his first term as governor by 1 percentage point.

“She addresses more sort of state priorities, and has become well known in rural parts of the state that we don’t really associate with Democrats,” Azari said. Baldwin’s much narrower 2024 victory came in “a very difficult national environment for Democrats.”

Baldwin held her event Thursday at a Steamfitters union apprenticeship training center on the East Side of Madison.

Steamfitters Local 601 business manager Doug Edwards called Baldwin “a homegrown roots type of person” who has been “just fabulous for working families in Wisconsin” and a staunch union ally.

“Tammy has just been a good advocate for all the people in Wisconsin, and I think that’s what put her over the top, even though it was close,” Edwards said in an interview.

In her victory speech, Baldwin recapped the broad range of issues that she’s made her own as a lawmaker, along with the people behind those issues who have been her supporters.

“It’s the farmers in the dairy industry who I fought alongside, earning the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau,” Baldwin said. “It’s the workers on foundry floors who are getting more business because of my Buy America rules — big shout-out to labor.” 

Baldwin has successfully pushed congressional colleagues to include provisions favoring domestic suppliers and manufacturers in bills such as the bipartisan infrastructure law.

“It’s the LGBTQ families who saw through the nasty attack campaigns and knew that I had their back, and it’s the women who’ve had our rights stripped away and saw me on the front lines fighting for their freedom,” she added.

Baldwin has championed legislation to restore a federally protected abortion rights, ended in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade. The bill she authored has stalled in both houses.

Also in 2022, however, Baldwin argued that the loss of Roe meant that the Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage could be at risk. She spearheaded a successful bill that gained bipartisan support affirming same-sex marriage as well as interracial couples.

Baldwin also highlighted her involvement in the Affordable Care Act, for which she wrote a provision that allows children to remain on their parents’ health insurance plans until they reach the age of 26.

After four years in the Senate as a member of its Democratic majority, in January Baldwin will begin her third term as a member of the minority party. Throughout her tenure in Congress, however, Baldwin has repeatedly joined with Republicans on bills that have aligned with her own stances.

On Tuesday, her margin of roughly 30,000 votes was about the same as the margin by which Harris lost to Trump in Wisconsin. And the senator’s final tally was about 5,000 more than Harris’ — suggesting that some Wisconsin voters who picked Trump split their tickets to vote for Baldwin.

Baldwin diplomatically acknowledged the presidential contest outcome Thursday.

“While we worked our hearts out to elect Kamala Harris, I recognize that the people of Wisconsin chose Donald Trump, and I respect their choice,” Baldwin said.

“You know that I will always fight for Wisconsin, and that means working with President Trump to do that, and standing up to him when he doesn’t have our best interest at heart.”