WI-SEN: Baldwin Showing Early Strength

Openly lesbian Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (WI-02) is running for the open U.S. Senate seat to represent Wisconsin.  Baldwin is a strong fundraiser and has never lost an election, although a win in November would be an LGBT rights achievement of historic proportions, that achievement is appearing more likely with the release of recent polling data showing Baldwin ahead of all potential Republican challengers.

Public Policy Polling summarizes their recent results:

PPP finds that a match up between Tammy Baldwin and Tommy Thompson for the Senate in Wisconsin would be a toss up. Baldwin leads Thompson 46-45 in this month's poll, continuing a pattern of tight numbers in the contest.  When PPP last polled Wisconsin in October Thompson was ahead 46-44. This seems like a race that's likely to remain closely contested all throughout the year.

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Voters are mixed on Baldwin as well, although she is not as well known. 31% see her favorably and 31% have a negative opinion. She is extremely polarizing with Democrats (54/10) pretty much all liking her and Republicans (3/57) all pretty much disliking her.

You see that same level of polarization in the head to head numbers between Baldwin and Thompson. Baldwin gets 87% of the Democratic vote, while Thompson gets 88% of the Republican vote. Thompson does have more crossover support, winning 9% of Democrats to Baldwin's 2% of Republicans.

Baldwin would be a nominal favorite against either of the other Republican Senate candidates. She leads Mark Neumann 47-41 and Jeff Fitzgerald 47-39. Neither Neumann (23/34) not Fitzgerald (19/38) has very good favorability ratings.

On Wednesday I blogged about the problems U.S. Representative David Cicilline is having in his re-election as an openly gay Congressman from Rhode Island so it is good to see the chances are at least slightly better than even there may be an openly lesbian member of the United States Senate in 2013!

WI-SEN: Baldwin Leads Money Race

Tammy Baldwin is running for the United States Senate from Wisconsin as an openly lesbian, Democratic politician. She is doing quite well, and is expected to easily win the Democratic nomination. This week came news that Baldwin raised over 1 million dollars in the last quarter of 2011 and now leads all her potential rivals in fundraising.

Baldwin announced the news on her Facebook page:

Tammy is thrilled by the enormous outpouring of support for her campaign to fight for WI's middle class. Thanks to you, we raised over $1.1 mil last quarter. Tammy now has $1.8+ mil cash-on-hand to share her message. This shows our strength, and these resources will be critical in responding to the false, negative right-wing attacks sure to come our way. Thank you to our more than 16,000 individual donors!

This is great news. Having an openly gay member of the United States Senate would be an amazing landmark in gay history.

Hat/tip to Metro Weekly's PoliGlot.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank Retirement Announcement

The longest-serving openly gay member of Congress, U.S. Representative Barney Frank (MA-05), announced today that he would not seek re-election to the U.S. House in 2012.

There are currently on.y four openly LGBT members of Congress, and Tammy Baldwin is giving up her seat to run for the United States Senate. David Ciccilline looks to have a tough-re-election bid. Jared Polis recently welcomed a newborn son to his household.

Joe.My.God has a collection of reactions from the national LGBT organizations on the news of Frank's retirement.

WATCH: LGBT Equality Caucus Says "It Gets Better"

Feingold Endorses Baldwin For Senate

Former U.S. Senator Russ Feingold has announced that he is endorsing openly gay Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin to become the next U.S. Senator from Wisconsin.

Feingold has long been an advocate for strong Wall Street reform and cleaning up corporations -- he opposed the Dodd-Frank legislation because it didn't go far enough and called on Democrats to stop taking corporate contributions.

The only other non-incumbent endorsement Feingold has made in 2012 is his backing of Elizabeth Warren, who is running for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. In his email endorsement of Warren, Feingold also stressed that she "stood up against the Wall Street wish list of a bankruptcy bill" and would "keep fighting for middle class families on Capitol Hill."

"Tammy is a true progressive champion, one of the strongest fighters for working families our state has ever produced and a hero to those of us who believe in breaking barriers and eliminating injustice in our society," adds Feingold, who also asks supporters to contribute to the Baldwin campaign. "I was proud to call her a colleague as we fought together in Washington for Wisconsin families -- and I’ll be proud to call her my Senator."

Tammy Baldwin Announces U.S. Senate Bid!

Tammy Baldwin is an openly lesbian Congresswoman from Wisconsin (WI-02) who has never lost an election and is today announcing her historic bid to become the first openly LGBT member of the United States Senate! There have been openly LGBT candidates for U.S. Senate before, but no one as widely regarded as Baldwin, who is already polling ahead of potential rivals in the Democratic primary.
Baldwin has represented the Madison, WI area in Congress for over a dozen years and has always been an openly gay politician, becoming the first (and only) open lesbian to serve in the U.S. Congress.
You can bet MadProfessah will be following this race very closely, as well as contributing to the campaign in whatever ways I can. Tammy is the real deal, a progressive Democrat who recognizes LGBT issues as party of the tapestry of progressive politics.