Profile: North Dakota Sen.-elect Heidi Heitkamp

• Heitkamp was not favored to win race when campaign began
• She succeeds retiring Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad
• She has campaigned for six statewide races

Heidi Heitkamp was seen as an underdog when she entered the race for North Dakota's open U.S. Senate seat against Rep. Rick Berg.

During the campaign, Heitkamp, a Democrat, did not hide her disappointment with the Obama administration while campaigning in the traditionally red state. She described herself to USA TODAY as "an independent voice" for the people of North Dakota.

Heitkamp, 56, will serve her first term in the Senate after 12 years away from public office. She will be taking the seat held by Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat who announced his retirement last year.

Heitkamp spent the past decade as a director of the Dakota Gasification Co., which operates a plant producing natural gas from coal. Heitkamp has criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to support coal as an energy source.

For North Dakota, a state with a booming oil industry and only 3% unemployment, energy rather than jobs or the economy became a leading theme in the election and a focal point for Heitkamp's campaign.

Before her work with Dakota Gasification, Heitkamp served as the North Dakota attorney general, pushing for harsher laws for sex offenders and leading a campaign for a successful ballot initiative to use tobacco settlement money for anti-smoking programs.

All together, Heitkamp has campaigned in six statewide races, with her last race for public office a 2000 bid for governor. She lost the race to Republican John Hoeven. She also was the North Dakota tax commissioner from 1986 to 1992 after losing a race for state auditor in 1984.

The University of North Dakota graduate and her husband, Darwin Lange, live in Mandan and have two children.