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<http://apnews.com>
Dianne Feinstein, senator from California, dies at age 90 | AP News
LISA MASCARO, MICHAEL BLOOD, MICHAEL BALSAMO, MARY CLARE JALONICK

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a centrist
Democrat who was elected to the Senate in 1992 in the "Year of the Woman"
and broke gender barriers throughout her long career in local and national politics, has died. She was 90.

Three people familiar with the situation confirmed her death to The
Associated Press on Friday.

Feinstein, the oldest sitting U.S. senator, was a passionate advocate for liberal priorities important to her state -- including environmental protection, reproductive rights and gun control -- but was also known as a pragmatic lawmaker who reached out to Republicans and sought middle
ground.

She was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and
became its first female president in 1978, the year Mayor George Moscone
was gunned down alongside Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall by Dan
White, a disgruntled former supervisor. Feinstein found Milk's body.

After Moscone's death, Feinstein became San Francisco's first female
mayor. In the Senate, she was one of California's first two female
senators, the first woman to head the Senate Intelligence Committee and
the first woman to serve as the Judiciary committee's top Democrat.

Although Feinstein was not always embraced by the feminist movement, her experiences colored her outlook through her five decades in politics.

"I recognize that women have had to fight for everything they have gotten, every right," she told The Associated Press in 2005, as the Judiciary
Committee prepared to hold hearings on President George W. Bush's
nomination of John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme
Court.

"So I must tell you, I try to look out for women's rights. I also try to
solve problems as I perceive them, with legislation, and reaching out
where I can, and working across the aisle," she said.

Her tendency for bipartisanship helped her notch legislative wins
throughout her career. But it also proved to be a liability in her later
years in Congress, as her state became more liberal and as the Senate and
the electorate became increasingly polarized.

A fierce debater who did not suffer fools, the California senator was long known for her verbal zingers and sharp comebacks when challenged on the
issues about which she was most fervent. But she lost that edge in her
later years in the Senate, as her health visibly declined and she often
became confused when answering questions or speaking publicly. In February 2023, she said she would not run for a sixth term the next year. And
within weeks of that announcement, she was absent for the Senate for more
than two months as she recovered from a bout of shingles.

Amid the concerns about her health, Feinstein stepped down as the top
Democrat on the Judiciary panel after the 2020 elections, just as her
party was about to take the majority. In 2023, she said she would not
serve as the Senate president pro tempore, or the most senior member of
the majority party, even though she was in line to do so. The president
pro tempore opens the Senate every day and holds other ceremonial duties.

One of Feinstein's most significant legislative accomplishments was early
in her career, when the Senate approved her amendment to ban manufacturing
and sales of certain types of assault weapons as part of a crime bill that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994. Though the assault weapons
ban expired 10 years later and was never renewed or replaced, it was a
poignant win after her career had been significantly shaped by gun
violence.

Feinstein remembered finding Milk's body, her finger slipping into a
bullet hole as she felt for a pulse. It was a story she would retell often
in the years ahead as she pushed for stricter gun control measures.

She had little patience for Republicans and others who opposed her on that issue, though she was often challenged. In 1993, during debate on the
assault weapons ban, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, accused her of having an insufficient knowledge of guns and the gun control issue.

Feinstein spoke fiercely of the violence she'd lived through in San
Francisco and retorted: ''Senator, I know something about what firearms
can do."

Two decades later, after 20 children and six educators were killed in a horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, first-term Republican
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas similarly challenged Feinstein during debate on legislation that would have permanently banned the weapons.

"I'm not a sixth grader," Feinstein snapped back at the much younger Cruz
- a moment that later went viral. She added: "It's fine you want to
lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I've been here
a long time."

Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco after the 1978 slayings of Moscone
and Milk, leading the city during one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Even her critics credited Feinstein with a calming influence, and
she won reelection on her own to two four-year terms.

With her success and growing recognition statewide came visibility on the national political stage.

In 1984, Feinstein was viewed as a vice presidential possibility for
Walter Mondale but faced questions about the business dealings of her
husband, Richard Blum. In 1990, she used news footage of her announcement
of the assassinations of Moscone and Milk in a television ad that helped
her win the Democratic nomination for California governor, making her the
first female major-party gubernatorial nominee in the state's history.

Although she narrowly lost the general election to Republican Pete Wilson,
the stage was set for her election to the Senate two years later to fill
the Senate seat Wilson had vacated to run for governor.

Feinstein campaigned jointly with Barbara Boxer, who was running for the state's other U.S. Senate seat, and both won, benefiting from positive
news coverage and excitement over their historic race. California had
never had a female U.S. senator, and female candidates and voters had been galvanized by the Supreme Court hearings in which the all-male Senate
Judiciary Committee questioned Anita Hill about her sexual harassment allegations against nominee Clarence Thomas.

Feinstein was appointed to the Judiciary panel and eventually the Senate Intelligence Committee, becoming the chairperson in 2009. She was the
first woman to lead the intelligence panel, a high-profile perch that gave
her a central oversight role over U.S. intelligence controversies,
setbacks and triumphs, from the killing of Osama bin Laden to leaks about National Security Agency surveillance.

Under Feinstein's leadership, the intelligence committee conducted a wide-ranging, five-year investigation into CIA interrogation techniques
during President George W. Bush's administration, including waterboarding
of terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons. The resulting 6,300-page "torture report" concluded among other things that waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not provide key evidence in the
hunt for bin Laden. A 525-page executive summary was released in late
2014, but the rest of the report has remained classified.

The Senate investigation was full of intrigue at the time, including
documents that mysteriously disappeared and accusations traded between the Senate and the CIA that the other was stealing information. The drama was captured in a 2019 movie about the investigation called "The Report," and
actor Annette Bening was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Feinstein.

In the years since, Feinstein has continued to push aggressively for
eventual declassification of the report.

"It's my very strong belief that one day this report should be
declassified," Feinstein said. "This must be a lesson learned: that
torture doesn't work."

Feinstein sometimes frustrated liberals by adopting moderate or hawkish positions that put her at odds with the left wing of the Democratic Party,
as well as with the more liberal Boxer, who retired from the Senate in
2017. Feinstein defended the Obama administration's expansive collection
of Americans' phone and email records as necessary for protecting the
country, for example, even as other Democratic senators voiced protests.
"It's called protecting America," Feinstein said then.

That tension escalated during Donald Trump's presidency, when many
Democrats had little appetite for compromise. Feinstein become the top
Democrat on the Judiciary panel in 2016 and led her party's messaging
through three Supreme Court nominations -- a role that angered liberal
advocacy groups that wanted to see a more aggressive partisan in charge.

Feinstein closed out confirmation hearings for Justice Amy Coney Barrett
with an embrace of Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham,
R-S.C., and a public thanks to him for a job well done. "This has been one
of the best set of hearings that I've participated in," Feinstein said at
the end of the hearing.

Liberal advocacy groups that had fiercely opposed Barrett's nomination to replace the late liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg were furious and called for her to step down from the committee leadership.

A month later, Feinstein announced she would remain on the committee but
step down as the top Democrat. The senator, then 87 years old, did not say
why. In a statement, she said she would "continue to do my utmost to bring about positive change in the coming years."

Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933. Her father, Leon Goldman, was a
prominent surgeon and medical school professor in San Francisco, but her
mother was an abusive woman with a violent temper that was often directed
at Feinstein and her two younger sisters.

Feinstein graduated from Stanford University in 1955, with a bachelor's
degree in history. She married young and was a divorced single mother of
her daughter, Katherine, in 1960, at a time when such a status was still unusual.

In 1961, Feinstein was appointed by then-Gov. Pat Brown to the women's
parole board, on which she served before running for the San Francisco
Board of Supervisors. Typical of the era, much of the early coverage of
her entrance into public life focused on her appearance, and she was
invariably described as stunning, tall, slender and raven-haired.

Feinstein's second husband, Bert Feinstein, was 19 years older than she,
but she described the marriage as "a 10" and kept his name even after his
death from cancer in 1978. In 1980, she married investment banker Richard
Blum, and thanks to his wealth, she was one of the richest members of the Senate. He died in February 2022.

In addition to her daughter, Feinstein has a granddaughter, Eileen, and
three stepchildren.





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