WASHINGTON — Running flat out for a new term at home and tiptoeing through tough issues in the Capitol, Ron Wyden brags that he’s “different, like Oregon.”

Not everyone sees that as a good thing, though, at least in the Senate.

In the space of just a few hours this week, Wyden managed to offend Republicans and Democrats over a package of legislation he co-authored permitting President Barack Obama to cut “fast-track” trade deals with just an up-or-down vote from Congress. It’s part of the Democratic senator’s effort to show he’s for trade, against government intrusion and pragmatic — even if it means embarrassing his president, irking his colleagues and angering labor and environmental groups back home.

“Wyden trying to pull a fast one on fast track,” blared the headline of a recent Oregon AFL-CIO newsletter.

“Save the Internet, Stop Fast Track,” read a 30-foot blimp by a company called Fight for the Future that flew over the senator’s town hall meeting last month.

Wyden acknowledges the hubbub and shrugs it off.

“It comes with the territory,” he said this week.”

At 66, Wyden is a 35-year veteran of the House and Senate, facing re-election to a full fourth term amid a dizzying array of other details. He’s a father of five — including twin 7-year-olds and a toddler — a cancer survivor and a key negotiator on tax policy, privacy law, health care policy and trade.

“Some days I look at him and I know he’s got to be tired,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del.

No one doubts that Wyden commands an unusually large portfolio of high-profile legislation or that his brand of pragmatism can be effective.

These days, Wyden is at the center of a pair of Congress’ most politically tense debates. As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, he’s his party’s chief negotiator of legislation that would allow President Barack Obama to negotiate trade deals, such as a historic accord with 11 Pacific Rim nations.

And should Senate Republicans try next week to extend the Patriot Act’s expiring spying powers, Wyden says he’ll try to block the effort with a filibuster.

If he does, little love would be lost between him and majority Republicans, who spent the week openly questioning Wyden’s credibility. A dozen Democrats who support the legislation weren’t happy with him, either. On the brink of Senate action, they let Wyden know they would vote against it — unless Republicans agreed to demands on other measures that would give them political cover with unions and other groups.

Abruptly, Wyden abandoned the legislation he had helped write. He joined the dozen protesting Democratic senators in the last-minute ultimatum, demanding that majority Republicans also offer votes on bills to enforce labor standards with the U.S. trading partners and crack down on currency manipulation by foreign governments.

An only-in-the-Senate spectacle ensued: Wyden and the dozen Democrats voted against moving ahead on the package they, and Obama, support.