Thom Tillis has helped ink plenty of bipartisan deals over the past two years. His advocacy for protecting same-sex marriage rights still surprised some of his fellow senators.

“When people first saw me get involved, they were scratching their heads,” the North Carolina Republican said in an interview just before the marriage bill passed the Senate on Tuesday.

The second-term Tillis saw the opportunity to put his own mark on an issue central to LGBTQ rights just a few weeks after he leaped into summertime gun safety negotiations that divided the GOP. And he stuck out as a new face in the gang working on a same-sex marriage agreement, which included two longtime Republican advocates in Rob Portman of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine as well as Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

His decision to get involved was emblematic of a Republican Party that’s divided over how much to edge away from hardline positions on social issues as it tries to rebuild credibility with swing voters after a disappointing midterm performance. As much as some Republicans hope to counterbalance the chaos of the Trump years and a conservative Supreme Court majority’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage still plainly splits the GOP: Tillis, Collins, and Portman joined just nine other Republican senators to ultimately support the bill.

Tillis said that it shouldn’t have shocked people to see him so out front on same-sex marriage way back in July: “That’s probably the libertarian side of me.” Tweaking the bill to allow more religious freedom exemptions, he added, helped Republicans deliver a stronger message to voters “that this is not about an extreme liberal, progressive end that would destroy religious freedom in this country.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) speaks with reporters as he leaves a meeting with the Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 16, 2022.