WASHINGTON — Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith was for the Iraq war before events turned him against it. A key leader in Senate efforts to extend gay rights, Smith supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

And while he backs fellow Republican John McCain for president, Smith has run ads touting his work with Democrats Barack Obama, John Kerry and even Ted Kennedy.

In 12 years in the Senate, Smith has taken positions that sometimes seem contradictory. A conservative on taxes and spending, Smith is more liberal on social issues. Above all, Smith says, he has shown a willingness to work with either party to get things done — and to criticize both parties when warranted.

Smith, 56, prides himself on reaching across the aisle to help create jobs, improve health care and bridge the nation’s rural-urban divide.

A millionaire Mormon from rural eastern Oregon, Smith was considered the state’s most explicitly conservative senator in a half-century when he was elected in 1996. In recent years, though, he has increasingly positioned himself as a moderate — earning national attention for opposing President Bush on gay rights, Medicaid cuts, drilling in Alaska and most notably, the war in Iraq.

He also forged a now-legendary partnership with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, a relationship Smith said has achieved “accomplishments for an Oregon agenda that is a great credit to our state.”

But Smith, who breezed to re-election six years ago, finds his path to a third term impeded by an Oregon electorate that appears increasingly Democratic, in a year when the Republican brand is in free-fall. Some analysts compare him to former GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who was cast out of office in a similar Democratic wave two years ago.

Smith “has been a fairly popular senator,” said political scientist Melissa Buis Michaux of Willamette University. “I don’t get the sense there’s a lot of animosity against him personally. But it does seem to be a Democratic year, so he may be swept up in the winds of change.”

Smith is acutely aware of his vulnerability — and of polls that show his Democratic opponent, Jeff Merkley, pulling narrowly ahead in the nationally watched race.

Asked how he counters a Democratic wave, Smith quipped, “I’m a big boy. I can take it. I’ll just learn how to surf.”

More seriously, Smith said that after two terms in the Senate, he has gained substantial seniority on a number of key committees — including the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.

“Oregon gives that up if they tell me to go home,” he said in an interview.

Smith also points to his longtime partnership with Wyden.

Most recently, the two men worked to revive the so-called county payments law, which pays Oregon more than $250 million a year to help rural schools and counties hurt by logging restrictions. While Wyden pressured Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats, Smith said he worked the other side of the aisle, persuading GOP senators to drop objections that could have forced removal of county payments from the massive financial bailout bill approved earlier this month.

“Had I not been there, we would not have won this remarkable victory for rural Oregon,” Smith said. “And the losers would have been schools, police departments and county roads” throughout the state.

County payments are just one example of his accomplishments on behalf of Oregon, says Smith, whose office produced a 30-page document listing achievements ranging from passage of the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act, which boosts suicide prevention programs, to support for a project to deepen the Columbia River, a key goal of Portland and other Columbia River ports. He also has worked with Wyden to protect Mt. Hood and helped secure water for Klamath farmers facing economic disaster.

The suicide prevention law, named after his late son, is unquestionably Smith’s proudest accomplishment — and one that showcased an emotional side Smith had rarely displayed in public before. Fellow senators were visibly shaken as Smith tearfully described his failures as a father and his inability to reach Garrett, who killed himself in 2003.

The law won unanimous support in the Senate in 2004, and Smith has worked since then to ensure suicide-prevention programs receive full funding.

The normally reserved Smith, whose father served in the Eisenhower administration, again showed an emotional side in December 2006, when he stood on the Senate floor and denounced the Iraq war. Smith, who voted to authorize the war in 2002, called the U.S. war effort “absurd” and said it might even be “criminal.”

Since then, Smith said he has voted 12 times for “timelines, deadlines, guidelines or benchmarks” to end the war — “whatever I think can get our troops home safely and swiftly and honorably.”

Democrats counter that those votes came after four years of votes to support the war. And they say Smith voted six times against measures ending the war.

They call Smith’s emphasis on his bipartisan record — including opposition to Alaska drilling and support for increased penalties for hate crimes — misleading.

“You can’t be bipartisan and vote with Bush 90 percent of the time. It just doesn’t work,” said Oregon Democratic Chairwoman Meredith Wood Smith.

Smith, who is no relation to the senator, said Gordon Smith stands with the president on the economy, on support for conservative judges and against a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

“That is not moderate or bipartisan, and I think Oregonians are becoming quite aware of that,” she said. “That’s why this is a competitive race, and that’s why we are going to win. The facade is off, and the real Gordon Smith is now standing up.”

There is some evidence to back the claim that Smith has moved to the left, or at least the middle, in the past two years. In 2007, the American Conservative Union gave Smith a score of 48 on a scale where 100 is perfectly conservative. The score represented a drop from Smith’s 72 in 2006 — a figure that equals his career average.

The liberal Americans for Democratic Action gave Smith a 55 percent in 2007, up significantly from his 15 percent score in 2006.

Smith cites a recent National Journal study ranking him in the ideological center of the Senate. More importantly, he said, he has repeatedly shown a willingness to break with his party on key issues — a claim he says Merkley cannot make.

“I’m proud to say I was the senator who blocked $50 billion in cuts to Medicaid” proposed by Bush and backed by fellow Republicans, Smith said. “In the end I blocked the budget.”

Smith also supported creation of a children’s insurance program and a tax increase on cigarettes.

“I have stood up for the disadvantaged in Oregon time and again in, I think, very meaningful and, some have said, heroic ways,” he said. Merkley, by contrast, “could not come up with one example when he crossed his party on an issue of conscience,” Smith said.

In the end, said political scientist Michaux, Smith’s voting record — or Merkley’s — may be less important than the initial next to his name on the ballot. Republicans are on the decline nationally and especially in Oregon, where Bush and the Iraq war are extremely unpopular. Many Oregon voters also are unhappy with the $700 billion economic bailout, which Smith supported and Merkley opposed.

“In change years, when you get a party becoming more dominant, as seems to be happening with Democrats — as measured by greater voter registration and enthusiasm for Obama — those in power who are moderates are the ones most vulnerable,” Michaux said.

Smith’s supporters include independents and moderate Democrats who are more likely to change allegiance, she said, while Republicans are less motivated to turn out to vote in a down year.

“That’s a dangerous place to be,” she said.