Thirty years ago this month, Dianne Feinstein was preparing to begin her first term as one of California’s two Democrat senators.
But for the Jewish female pioneer it was not the start, but the continuation of a remarkable political career which – at the age of 89 – is only now beginning to draw to a close.
When the Senate returns next month, Feinstein will be the most senior member of the Democratic caucus. In theory, that would put her in position to become the upper chamber’s president pro tempore – and third in the line of the presidential succession.
Feinstein has opted to pass up the role, while reiterating last week she has every intention of finishing her Senate term which ends in January 2025. Although she hasn’t yet announced that she won’t run again in two year’s time, amid questions about her mental agility – some seemingly driven by sexist double standards, critics say – California Democrats are already jostling to succeed her as the party’s nominee in a solidly blue state.
However, California wasn’t always the Democrat heartland it is today. For much of the post-war period, it leaned towards the Republicans – Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan forged their political careers in the Golden State – and it only began to trend towards the Democrats in the 1990s.
Feinstein was at the forefront of that transition. In 1990, she narrowly lost a bid to become the state’s governor. Two years later, however, Feinstein scored a landslide victory winning a Senate by-election by 16 points. Feinstein has been re-elected five times since, often by similarly lop-sided margins. Indeed, in 2012 she won 7.86 million votes – the highest popular vote in any US Senate election in history.
That’s not the only historical record Feinstein has shattered. Having already become California’s longest-serving senator, in November she clocked up another first: she is now the longest-serving female senator in US history.
Feinstein first attracted national fame on a dark night in November 1978 when the San Francisco mayor George Moscone and board of supervisors’ member Harvey Milk were assassinated in City Hall. It was Feinstein – a fellow board member – who rushed into Milk’s office on hearing the fatal shots and attempted to take the pulse of the stricken gay rights icon.
As president of the board, Feinstein stepped into the mayoralty, helping to bring calm to the shocked city. Twice comfortably re-elected, she won high approval ratings and a reputation as one of the US’ most effective city leaders.
The trauma of the assassinations had a lasting impact on Feinstein’s politics. “The city needed to be reassured that there would be some consistency as we put the broken pieces back together,” she recalled in 2000. “From that nonpartisan experience, I drew my greatest political lesson—the heart of political change is at the centre of the political spectrum.”
It also forged a recurring theme of her career: Feinstein’s commitment to public safety and tackling gun crime. In 1983, for instance, she put her career on the line by attempting to ban handguns in the city. In the Senate a decade later, she wrote the assault weapons ban, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton and – until George W Bush allowed it to expire a decade later – was credited with seeing a 70 percent drop in mass shooting fatalities.
The granddaughter of Jewish immigrants from Poland, Feinstein has suggested that growing up in the shadow of the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust played a big part in shaping her political outlook. She has spoken of the realisation that “terrible injustices could be inflicted on people because of hatred”. That awareness, she argued, “instilled in me a commitment to the social good”.
Arguably one of Feinstein’s finest moments came when she chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee. For five years after she took the helm in 2007, the committee – which keeps tabs on America’s spooks – investigated allegations of torture by the CIA during the “war on terror”. Despite coming under heavy pressure, Feinstein, who was the first woman to chair the committee, insisted on publishing its damning findings. “I came to the conclusion that America’s greatness is being able to say we made a mistake and we are going to correct it,” she declared when the report was released.
Unsurprisingly, earlier in her career Feinstein attracted the attention of presidential candidates seeking an a politically appealing and respected running mate. In 1984, for instance, Walter Mondale came close to making her the first female vice-presidential candidate (he eventually opted for Geraldine Ferraro), while her name was pushed by Senate colleagues once again in 2000.
In recent years, Feinstein’s centrist politics has earned her sharp criticism from the left. However, an effort to her oust her in 2018 fell far short. “Trying to topple someone widely seen as a California institution,” the New York Times reported, had proved surprisingly difficult.
Dianne Feinstein’s time on the political stage may now be entering its final act. But, it appears, she will be the one who decides when the curtain falls.
