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.
Could be, but Schiff is running for the seat in 2024 along with Cong Porter. Harris will have to compete in a primary in 2024.
Will the Dems make Harris an offer she can’t refuse?
Pretty sure her hubby had the contract for the Calif “High Speed Raul”
Pretty sure her hubby had the contract for the Calif “High Speed Rail”
CAN he do that?????
Yep.
FROM YOUR LIPS TO GOD’S EARS
When you spend your life surrounded by security & other wonderful status items-—YOU NEVER REALIZE HOW THE REST OF US LIVE.
We have to be OUR OWN SECURITY
I heard on the radio that she had just voted yesterday! How is this possible? Why? (Oh, I know, but still ask).
The founding fathers knew what they were doing - citizen Representatives for 2 years and then home (their intention, IMO) and the Senate, requiring a little longer tenure to address long term and national needs got 6 years. That should be enough. But no. Damned politicians get there in DC, get pampered, bribed and entrenched and never leave.
She never should have gotten there in the first place, let alone get 3 decades of grift out of it.
SHE NEVER would have gotten this far if Harvey Milk hadn’t died.
And never got to enjoy a penny of it.................
They never learn. Didn’t with RBG and with any of the other dying/dead dinosaurs in office (see Fetterman). Shoot, you could even say the same thing about The Turtle now.
She already looks dead in those pictures.
I always heard that if you can’t say anything good about the deceased, don’t say anything at all. so . . .crickets
No comment
This story is being “Milked” for all its worth.
Newsome said he would place a black woman in her seat after she got to bad to work we shall see.
EVEN LESS OUTRAGE OVER HAVING SPIES IN THE USA
“In Jesus Name, I pray for her soul.”
Probably too late. Any decisions about her mortal soul would’ve had to have been made by herself while living.
If, by chance, she had a literal come-to-Jesus moment in her last days it’s good news.
Oh yes Hell will as she has been a faithful servant..
DING DONG! A witch is DEAD. Partially responsible for thousands of dead.
Very good news. Happy day.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.