As mayor, Feinstein proposed a ban on handguns after the assassinations of Moscone and Milk, sparking immediate backlash. The White Panthers, a political collective that opposed Feinstein’s gun control measure, launched a recall campaign to remove her from office in 1983 and amassed enough petitions for a vote. Feinstein overwhelmingly won the election. “I don’t think this will stop anyone from filing against me, but I think anyone who does is going to be creamed,” she boasted to The New York Times after her victory.
During her time as mayor—a position she held until 1988—Feinstein enacted a handgun ban, traveled to China to nurture trade relations, and steered San Francisco through the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Mayor Feinstein’s AIDS budget for San Francisco was bigger than President Ronald Reagan’s AIDS budget was for the entire country.” In 1987, City & State magazine named Feinstein the country’s most effective mayor.
In 1990, Feinstein won the Democratic nomination for governor of California—the first woman in the state’s history to win a major party’s nomination for governor—but lost the race. Later, she won a bid for the US Senate in 1992, which was declared “Year of the Woman” after four female senators, including Barbara Boxer, were voted into the Senate in the same election year.
As a senator, her first coup was passing a ban on the production of semiautomatic assault weapons. Apart from that, she has advocated for protecting deserts; championed LGBTQ+ rights; crusaded for assault weapons bans; introduced and helped passed a law that created the nationwide AMBER Alert network; ordered the declassification of a report into the CIA’s post-9/11 use of torture in interrogations; served as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and served as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee—the first woman in US history to ever hold such a position.
Feinstein has ruffled a few feathers along the way. As the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, she was criticized for the handling of Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing in 2020—particularly when she hugged South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham for a job well done after the hearing came to a close. Democrats were so incensed that Feinstein even faced calls for resignation; she stepped down from her role on the Judiciary Committee at the end of that year. In 2022, Feinstein also faced suggestions from colleagues that she was too old to serve following interactions in which they noted she wasn’t as sharp as she once was.
In November 2022, when Feinstein officially became the longest-serving woman senator, she said in a statement that it was an “incredible honor,” adding, “It has been a great pleasure to watch more and more women walk the halls of the Senate. We went from two women senators when I ran for office in 1992 to 24 today–and I know that number will keep climbing.”
Feinstein, whose health had been declining, was absent from the senate for months earlier this year, but resisted calls to resign before her current term is up. She announced her plans to retire from the Senate in 2024 after a number of candidates, including Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, jumped into the race to vie for her seat.
Feinstein married three times. She married Jack Berman in 1956, but they divorce in 1959; she was married to Bertram Feinstein from 1962 until his death in 1978; in 1980, she married Richard Blum, who she was with for more than 40 years until his death in 2022.
Though Feinstein herself has passed, her legacy in both state and federal politics will no doubt continue to live on, as Senator Alex Padilla said last month: “It would be impossible to write the history of California politics, it would be impossible to write the history of American politics without acknowledging the trailblazing career of Senator Dianne Feinstein.”
Kelly Rissman
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