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.
LIKELY NEWSOM WILL APOINT SOMEONE BLACK AND FEMALE (maybe even Barbara Lee the communist congressmemeber from Berkeley or is that redundant?). Pelosi’s daughter was Feinstein’s minder the last few months. Pelosi wants shciff as a reward for being her impeachment buttboy. But newsom wants someone else. The death is a blow for schiff’s chances because Newsom’s appointment will have the advantage of incumbency.
Before we make her saint important to remember some of her biggest accomplishments.
SHE ENRICHED HER HUSBAND AND HERSELF BY SLOUGHING CONTRACTS TO HER HUSBAND, SHE FAVORED STRICT GUN CONTROL AFTER CARRYING CONCEALED WHEN MOSCONE AND MILK WERE MURDERED AND SHE BECAME MAYOR. SHE HAD A DRIVER FOR 30 YEARS WHO WAS A CHINESE SPY. WITHHOLDNG AN ACCUSATORY LETTER ON A USSC NOMINEE AND SPRINGING IT ON EVERYONE AT THE HEARING. SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN RMEOVED FROM THE COMMITTEE.
Just pining for the fjords.
Memory Eternal!
All offices of government supposedly have oversight to keep them in check. All, except for Congressional offices where everything goes! And yes it is nauseating!
Good news!
And DOD where the top brass all land Board of Director seats after leaving the military.
And FDA where the regulators get hired by the companies they were regulating the day before (see Purdue Pharma).
I don’t think Feinstein worships Satan, I think Satan worships her!
Yeah she does, she was one of many in Satan’s hip pocket...
Weird never heard of Ding Dongs. Grew up in NJ in the 1970s. It was Ring Dings.
This should be a bigger discussion then. Why aren’t Republican’s even bringing this up? If she was in a soma, how did she vote? How is this legal?
Ding Dongs, Ring Dings, and King Dons are the same products. Legal fights over names.
Likely I would prefer Ring Dings, unknown in the Midwest. Stay away from all that stuff in my old age, except for Entemann’s Mini Pound Cakes a few times a year with espresso.
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.