This Week's Toon: Tammy Baldwin for Senate?

Curiously, I haven't drawn terribly many cartoons about Representative Tammy Baldwin, the first out lesbian elected to Congress. In part, that's because, like most cartoonists, I draw more cartoons that are critical of politicians than cartoons that say "Hey! Great job!" It's also because -- while she is no shrinking violet -- Ms. Baldwin doesn't spend nearly as much time on television or penning op-ed pieces for print journalism as some other congressmen do.

As such, she might be a fitting successor to retiring Senator Herb Kohl.

But because I haven't drawn her much, I haven't yet captured her caricature.

One of the first cartoons I drew about then-candidate for Congress Baldwin was for the cover of In Step Magazine, a now-defunct LGBT bi-weekly newspaper to whom I was a regular contributor in the mid-1990's. It was the year-end issue of the paper, and the drawing was a collage of faces and images in the news in 1997.


I thought this was a terrible likeness, but somebody on her staff liked it enough to secure my permission to use it on the cover of an invitation to a birthday party-cum-fund raiser for candidate Baldwin. (I forget how they got around that brush partly in front of her hair.)

I drew her again once she won election to Wisconsin's second congressional district -- this after House Majority Leader Dick Armey publicly referred to Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank as "Barney Fag":