Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the longest-serving woman in the Senate, died on Thursday night, according to reports confirmed by a member of her family. Feinstein was 90 years old.
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“She’s a legend,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has said. “A legend in California as the first woman senator. A legend in the Senate. She was the leader on so many different issues.”
Born Dianne Goldman on June 22, 1933, in San Francisco, Feinstein first assumed public office in 1969, at the age of 35, when she won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. A decade later, following the assassination of George Moscone, she became the mayor of San Francisco, coming into power just as the AIDS crisis was devastating the city’s queer communities. During Feinstein’s tenure, which lasted until 1988, the San Francisco health department set the global standard for AIDS health care at San Francisco General Hospital. Feinstein is also credited with saving San Fransisco’s cable-car system while in office.
Then in 1990, she became the first woman in California’s history to win a major party’s gubernatorial nomination, although she would lose to Republican Pete Wilson.
Feinstein was elected to the Senate, alongside Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, in 1992, becoming the first woman to chair the Senate rules committee and the Senate intelligence committee. Her legacy as a senator also includes authoring a federal assault-weapons ban that, following the 101 California Street shooting in 1993, managed to receive support from both sides of the aisle; releasing a report on the CIA’s use of torture while interrogating potential terrorists; passing the California Desert Protection Act; reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act; and authoring the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, enshrining marriage equality into federal law.
In recent years, as her health declined, Feinstein faced pressures, both from within her party and externally, to resign. Yet she refused, a move endorsed by former house speaker Nancy Pelosi. “You’re talking about somebody we owe so much to,” Pelosi told Politico of Feinstein, though the two “were never really on the same page politically.” (Throughout her career, Feinstein was considered a centrist.)
Nevertheless, this past February, Feinstein announced that she would not seek reelection in 2024. “I campaigned in 2018 on several priorities for California and the nation: preventing and combating wildfires, mitigating the effects of record-setting drought, responding to the homelessness crisis, and ensuring all Americans have access to affordable, high-quality health care,” she noted in a statement. “Congress has enacted legislation on all of these topics over the past several years, but more needs to be done—and I will continue these efforts.” Not long thereafter, however, Feinstein was absent from the Capitol for more than two months while she recovered from shingles and post-shingles encephalitis. She returned to work in May, visibly diminished and confined to a wheelchair.
Feinstein was married three times, most recently to investor Richard C. Blum, who died early last year. She is survived by one daughter, Katherine, whom Feinstein shared with her first husband, Jack Berman, a San Francisco judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney. Feinstein’s second husband, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, died from colon cancer in 1978.
Here, figures from politics, entertainment, media, and more pay tribute to the trailblazing career of Senator Feinstein.
