Dianne Feinstein, Longest-Serving Female Senator, Dead At 90

Dianne Feinstein, whose decadeslong political career was marked by numerous firsts, has died. She was 90.

“Dianne Feinstein, right from the start, was an icon for women in politics,” former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement shared with ABC7.

While several Democrats had raised concern about her ability to continue serving in light of several health challenges, Feinstein defied calls to resign.

She was hospitalized as recently as August over a fall in her San Francisco home. Earlier this year, the senator also dealt with a bout of shingles and returned to the upper chamber after nearly three months of absence.

Feinstein became San Francisco’s first female mayor in 1978 after then-Mayor George Moscone was murdered along with City Supervisor Harvey Milk in a case that shook the country. Feinstein, who had been the San Francisco Board of Supervisor’s first female president at the time of the shooting, later became one of the most prominent national advocates for gun control. As a U.S. senator, Feinstein introduced the 1994 bill banning assault weapons nationally.

“This is something I’m deeply passionate about, and I believe it saves lives,” she later said. “I don’t intend to stop.”

Born in 1933 to a family of Eastern European immigrants, Feinstein is Jewish by heritage but attended a prestigious Catholic high school known for championing female empowerment.

She later attended Stanford University, graduating in 1955 with a B.A. in history. It was in college that she discovered her passion for politics, becoming a member of the Young Democrats and serving as her class vice president.

After college, Feinstein joined the public affairs nonprofit the Coro Foundation and, in 1956, married Jack Berman. They had one child, Katherine Feinstein, before they divorced in 1960. Katherine would later follow in her mother’s footsteps as a civil servant, serving as a San Francisco Superior Court Judge for 12 years.

Feinstein took the name of her second husband, neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein, to whom she was married from 1962 until his death in 1978. In 1980, she married Richard Blum, an investment banker who died in 2022.

As the first female mayor of San Francisco, Feinstein oversaw the successful transformation of the city’s cable car system and resoundingly defeated a bitter recall effort.

Her term wasn’t without controversy, though. Feinstein infuriated the gay community when she vetoed a 1982 effort to legalize domestic partnerships. Still, she was considered a generally popular and effective leader and was reelected twice, serving until 1988.

In 1990, Feinstein became California Democrats’ first female candidate for governor. She lost that race but, two years later, ran and won the 1992 special election for U.S. Senate. Along with Barbara Boxer, who was also elected that year, she would become one of the state’s first two female U.S. senators. The two were also the first Jewish women to be elected to the body.

As a senator, Feinstein became deeply involved in national security and made history yet again when she became the first female chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Feinstein was one of the few lawmakers to push back against the CIA’s controversial post-Sept. 11 tactics at the time, launching an investigation into their use of torture.

“We can’t erase our mistakes by destroying the history books,” Feinstein said after only a portion of the probe’s findings were released. “While this report isn’t easy to read, it offers a vital lesson on what happens when we ignore our values.”

Feinstein was also the first woman to chair the Senate Rules Committee.

A champion for victim’s rights who helped create the AMBER alert system for missing children, Feinstein was known for being tough on crime. She was criticized for leaning farther right than many of her Democratic colleagues on issues like the war on drugs and immigration.

She also drew ire from progressives over her defense of the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program and her characterization of NSA leaker Edward Snowden as a traitor.

Feinstein was nevertheless a well-liked official, winning reelection four times. In 2012, she shattered the record for the most popular votes in Senate election history.

Though this would change during her final years in office, many praised Feinstein for seemingly never slowing down.

As one former staffer told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2011, “she has more energy and discipline than I do, and I’m 34.”

“Some people show age differently than others, no question about that,” Feinstein, then 78, told the Chronicle at the time. “You can be very old at 50 and you can be very young at 90. I really believe that. It depends on your brain, it depends on your health, it depends on your drive, on your determination and your motivation.”

Concerns about Feinstein’s mental fitness began circulating publicly in 2020. An instance where she repeated the same question word-for-word during a hearing raised red flags about possible memory loss, and some missteps during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett triggered even more public concern.

Feinstein denied any mental decline and filed paperwork the following year to run for reelection in 2024, when she would be 91 years old. When Alaska Rep. Don Young died in 2022, an 88-year-old Feinstein became the oldest sitting member of Congress.

Around that time, multiple senators and colleagues of Feinstein’s began expressing their concerns about her to the media. They said she sometimes appeared to forget who she was speaking with mid-conversation and seemed not to recognize senators she’d worked with for decades.

In 2023, multiple prominent lawmakers announced they were running for Feinstein’s seat, including California Reps. Katie Porter, Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee.