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Dianne Feinstein, California’s longest-serving senator, dies at 90
CNBC ^ | SEP 29 20238:49 AM | Kevin Breuninger

Posted on 09/29/2023 6:07:41 AM PDT by Red Badger

KEY POINTS

* Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90.

* Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.

* The Democratic senator’s decades-long career was studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.

* Ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) attends a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing examining issues facing prisons and jails during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic on Capitol Hill June 2, 2020 in Washington, D.C.

Dianne Feinstein, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and the longest-serving senator from California, has died at age 90, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News on Friday.

The Democrat’s passing marks the end of a boundary-pushing political career that spanned more than half a century, studded with major legislative achievements on issues including gun control and the environment.

Feinstein had planned to retire at the end of her current term in 2024.

Feinstein’s death leaves vacant her powerful Senate seat, requiring Gov. Gavin Newsom to appoint a temporary successor.

A San Francisco native, Feinstein cleared a path for women in politics as she rose the ranks of leadership. After two failed bids for mayor, she was elected president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors in 1978, becoming the first woman to hold the title.

Feinstein was made acting mayor of the city later that year, after then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, her colleague on the board of supervisors, were assassinated by Dan White, a former member of the same board.

In later interviews, Feinstein recalled finding Milk’s body and searching for a pulse by putting her finger in a bullet hole.

Feinstein was the first to announce the murders to the press. She was appointed mayor a week later, again becoming the first woman elevated to the office.

The tragedy had the side effect of jumpstarting Feinstein’s political career, but the trauma of the day stuck with her even decades later.

“I never really talk about this,” Feinstein said with a sigh when asked about the murders in a CNN interview in 2017.

Her streak of firsts continued at the national level. Feinstein lost a gubernatorial bid in 1990, but two years later won a special election to the U.S. Senate, becoming California’s first female senator.

Weeks later, the state’s second female senator, Barbara Boxer, was sworn into office, making California the first state in the U.S. to be represented in the Senate by two women.

Their 1992 elections helped define the “Year of the Woman,” in which four Democratic women were newly elected to the Senate — more than doubling the chamber’s female representation.

In the Senate, Feinstein clinched some of her biggest legislative achievements. She wrote and championed the 1994 assault weapons ban, both a landmark bill and a continuation of a career-long effort to enact stricter gun controls.

The legislation passed Congress and was signed by then-President Bill Clinton, albeit with major compromises including a 10-year sunset provision. The ban expired in 2004 during the administration of George W. Bush.

She also sponsored bills that protect millions of acres of California’s desert, worked to create a nationwide AMBER alert network, helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and fought for the release of a lengthy report detailing the CIA’s torture practices, among other accomplishments.

Over her three decades in the Senate, Feinstein has generally been seen as a political moderate in her party. In the 1990s and 2000s, that reputation made Feinstein highly popular — but much of that popularity eroded in the proceeding years as California’s political tint shifted toward deeper shades of blue.

As her centrism grew increasingly out of fashion, Feinstein’s standing in her final stretch in office was further diminished by a crescendo of skepticism about her mental fitness for the Senate.

A damning report from the San Francisco Chronicle in April 2022 featured unnamed Democratic colleagues of Feinstein fretting over her apparent decline in mental acuity. Feinstein defended her ability to govern, while acknowledging that she had been going through an “extremely painful and distracting” period as her late husband, financier Richard Blum, had battled cancer.

By the time Feinstein announced that she would not seek reelection at the end of her term in 2024, multiple Democratic politicians had already launched campaigns to succeed her.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; Politics/Elections; US: California
KEYWORDS: byedifi; thegooddieyoung
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To: Red Badger
Like the infamous Paul Wellstone eulogy, we are about to witness more proof of how wretched the Democrat/Left/ruling class really are.

The same people who are about to piously beatify Sen. Feinstein, will viscously fight over the substantial political and financial capital she leaves behind.

For example, her daughter has been part of a nasty court battle with her step siblings last month, giving her power of attorney for her mother, even though she was a sitting Senator .

61 posted on 09/29/2023 6:44:47 AM PDT by SecondAmendment (The history of the present Federal Government is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations ....)
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To: outofsalt

She's really most sincerely dead...

62 posted on 09/29/2023 6:45:02 AM PDT by null and void ( Fall Is Here: Pumpkin Spice-Scented Children Presented To Joe Biden)
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To: Red Badger

No. Yesterday it was 51-49. Today it’s 50-49.


63 posted on 09/29/2023 6:45:10 AM PDT by napscoordinator (DeSantis is a beast! Florida is the freest state in the country! )
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To: ping jockey

It’s about the only piece of uplifting news lately.


64 posted on 09/29/2023 6:45:11 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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Comment #65 Removed by Moderator

To: knarf

Her replacement will be even worse


66 posted on 09/29/2023 6:46:36 AM PDT by 38special (I should've said something earlier)
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To: Red Badger
Comment Deleted.
67 posted on 09/29/2023 6:47:27 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (The worst thing about censorship is █████ ██ ████ ████████ █ ███████ ████. FJB.)
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To: The Louiswu

You are much nicer than I.


68 posted on 09/29/2023 6:47:30 AM PDT by null and void ( Fall Is Here: Pumpkin Spice-Scented Children Presented To Joe Biden)
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To: Red Badger

Good!! Which traitor is next?


69 posted on 09/29/2023 6:47:36 AM PDT by DarthVader (Not by speeches & majority decisions will the great issues of the day be decided but by Blood & Iron)
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To: The Louiswu

That likely didn’t happen!


70 posted on 09/29/2023 6:48:48 AM PDT by DarthVader (Not by speeches & majority decisions will the great issues of the day be decided but by Blood & Iron)
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To: Red Badger
Meh.

Don't care,

Good riddance.

71 posted on 09/29/2023 6:49:49 AM PDT by Snake Skin Sonny (My loathing of democrats knows no bounds. The world would be a better place without them.)
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To: Red Badger

How long before Kamala invokes the old bat’s name in her push for gun control?


72 posted on 09/29/2023 6:50:03 AM PDT by gundog (It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. )
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To: Red Badger

Another evil communist leaves in disgrace, how much grief has she caused to Americans with her policies?


73 posted on 09/29/2023 6:51:28 AM PDT by stockpirate (A group of baboons is referred to as a "Congress" of baboons.)
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To: null and void
Ding dong the with is dead

Ding Dong the witch is dead-Klaus Nomi

There is a song for that...Hat tip to Rush Limbaugh's Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites.

74 posted on 09/29/2023 6:53:30 AM PDT by DCBryan1 (Das dicke Ende kommt noch!)
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To: outofsalt

No. In Ca. It will have to be a black tranny “woman”.


75 posted on 09/29/2023 6:55:14 AM PDT by pas
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To: null and void

It’s that a Ring Ding? Haven’t seen one of those in decades


76 posted on 09/29/2023 6:55:44 AM PDT by Blue Highway
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To: Blue Highway

Ding Dong.


77 posted on 09/29/2023 6:56:18 AM PDT by stevio (Fight until you die.)
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To: Red Badger

Citizen Free Press
@CitizenFreePres
Dianne Feinstein voted yesterday.

She was marked as a “yes” vote on the Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act.
9:11 AM · Sep 29, 2023


78 posted on 09/29/2023 6:57:39 AM PDT by mewzilla (Never give up; never surrender!)
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To: Red Badger

Ruh Roh! Who will advance?


79 posted on 09/29/2023 6:57:54 AM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this💩? 🚫💉)
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To: Red Badger

Never speak ill of the dead, but GOOD RIDDANCE.

Of course, we will get a replacement far worse.

Maybe Newsom will appoint Harris as CA Senator to get her out of the way.


80 posted on 09/29/2023 6:58:31 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom (“Occupy your mind with good thoughts or your enemy will fill them with bad ones.” ~ Thomas More)
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