Remembering Feinstein’s dedication
Too often, public figures, whether athletes, singers or politicians, remain on the public stage past their prime, lingering until the spotlight that once illuminated their glory magnifies their decline. Obscured in that unflattering light and made blurry by time are the singular talents, circumstances and moments that made these individuals excellent.
Dianne Feinstein, the senior U.S. senator from California and the longestserving female senator in history, died Thursday night at age 90. Especially sad is that in the last few years, because of her age, failing health and obvious cognitive decline, Feinstein became better known as a symbol of the gerontocracy of Congress than for the trailblazing and power-brokering force she was in California and American politics.
Rarely has an American politician been forced to introduce themselves to the nation with as shocking and chilling an announcement as Feinstein did on Nov. 27, 1978.
On that day, a disgruntled member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Dan White, shot and killed San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California and one of the first in the nation.
After killing Moscone, White rushed by Feinstein, the president of the board of supervisors, went into Milk’s office, shot him and rushed past Feinstein again, leaving her to find Milk’s body and vainly search for a pulse.
A few minutes later, standing in the corridor of City Hall, looking shocked but with a steady gaze and voice, Feinstein, now San Francisco’s acting mayor, announced: “As president of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to inform you that both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor
Harvey Milk have been shot and killed.”
Shouts of pain, anger and confusion followed, which Feinstein calmly let subside before she continued: “The … the suspect is supervisor Dan White.”
Feinstein’s handling of one of the most tragic days in her city’s history would have been memorable had she never held another political office, but she proceeded to break ground.
She became the first woman appointed and then elected mayor of San Francisco, and she would serve in that office for 10 years, until 1988. In 1984, she was considered a potential vice presidential candidate for the Democratic nominee, Walter Mondale, and in 1990, she became the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for governor.
She lost to the Republican incumbent, Pete Wilson, but in 1992, she ran in a special election for the Senate. Feinstein won, and she and Barbara Boxer, who had won a normal election-cycle
race, became the first women sent by California to the Senate and the first pair of women to simultaneously represent a state.
In the Senate, Feinstein was the first woman to chair the Senate rules and intelligence committees, as well as serve as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Not surprisingly for a politician whose life and career was shaped by an act of gun violence, Feinstein was passionate in her advocacy of gun safety. She wrote the amendment to the 1994 crime bill banning assault weapons.
After the law expired in 2004, Feinstein continued to fight for stronger gun safety legislation. Last year, speaking in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing the day after the Uvalde massacre, Feinstein lamented, “Yet rather than taking action, all we have done, time and time again, is to try to console the victims of these senseless tragedies and wait for the next inevitable attack.”
In February, Feinstein announced she would not seek re-election to a sixth full term. Instances, both private and public, of cognitive decline were too frequent, obvious and painful to ignore. One could say she wasn’t who she once was.
But listen to the truth and rationality of her statement about Uvalde. And know that on Thursday morning, the last vote she took was to avoid a government shutdown.
That statement and that vote tells us that Dianne Feinstein was who she always had been — a public servant committed to the public good.
Trailblazing senator served the public good — that, not her decline, is her legacy