The New York Times
Dianne Feinstein, who became famous for her work in the US Senate over three decades, died on Thursday evening (29) at the age of 90. She was the oldest parliamentarian in the House of Representatives.
The death, confirmed by members of her family, came months after she announced she would retire at the end of her term in January 2025. The news ended speculation about whether she would seek another term on Capitol Hill and sparked a race among Democrats in California who want to get it done.
Feinstein’s political life unfolded during tense years in the Senate, during which former President Bill Clinton was impeached and acquitted and the United States went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Throughout her term, she vigorously defended civil rights and gun control. He also denounced the abuse of national security measures against terrorism suspects.
A tough candidate who often espoused conservative ideas, Feinstein served as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988. After losing a race for governor of California in 1990 to Republican Pete Wilson, she won a special election for the Senate in 1992. He held the office again in 1994 and was reelected by large majorities in 2000, 2006 and 2012.
When Feinstein won a sixth term in 2018, she was already the Senate’s oldest member, having survived four U.S. presidencies and seeing the start of a fifth, that of Joe Biden.
Feinstein made notable political strides as a woman, becoming the first female mayor of San Francisco; the first to be considered as a candidate for vice president in 1984 (Walter Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro); the first major party nominee for governor of California; the first woman elected to the Senate from the state; and in course of time he attained prominence among the most senior members of the House of Representatives.
She presided over former President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremonies in 2009, another unprecedented achievement by a woman. And in November 2022, after 30 years in the Senate, she surpassed Barbara A. Mikulski’s record as the longestserving senator in American history.
Feinstein considered herself a political centrist and sometimes changed her views. She opposed and later supported samesex marriage and the death penalty. However, the most notable changes occurred after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
She voted for the war in Iraq and for a time supported Republican President George W. Bush’s policy of detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects, most of whom were transferred to Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in 2006.
But in 2007, Feinstein advocated for the closure of Guantanamo, and in 2014, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she oversaw a report that criticized and detailed the CIA’s post9/11 program to detain terror suspects in secret prisons around the world and subject them them to torture, supposedly to detect and prevent further attacks.
Obama ordered an end to these practices after taking office in 2009, although human rights groups said many continued for years.
“My words bring me no joy,” Feinstein told the Senate when the report was released. “However, this pressure, fear and anticipation of future terrorist attacks does not justify, mitigate or excuse inappropriate actions by individuals or organizations in the name of national security. The most important lesson from this report is that regardless of the pressure or need to act: the actions of the intelligence community must reflect who we are as a nation and adhere to our laws and standards.”
Feinstein had a difficult life story, and her face was marked by hardship: an abusive childhood at the hands of a mentally unstable and alcoholic mother, a painful divorce that left her a young single mother, and the deaths of her father and second husband after long struggles with Cancer.
At 45, still unknown outside her hometown, she seemed to have failed in politics. Feinstein was chairman of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the borough’s legislative body, and a virtual hopeless candidate for mayor. She had already lost twice in the city’s nonpartisan mayoral elections, in 1971 to Joseph Alioto and in 1975 to George Moscone.
And his life was threatened: A bomb had been planted in his home, allegedly by members of the New World Liberation Front, one of several radical underground groups operating in the Bay Area. The bomb didn’t explode, but the windows of his vacation home were shot out.
On November 27, 1978, at the end of her tether, Feinstein announced that she wanted to give up political life. Two hours later, shots were fired in the hallway next to his office. She ran toward the gunfire and moments later was kneeling next to a dying mayor. Moscone and Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay supervisor, who was shot in another office, were killed by Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor who was quickly captured and arrested.