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California Sen. Dianne Feinstein had become a focus of questions about the advanced age of many U.S. politicians, including President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Feinstein, who had been in ailing health for months but who remained a member of the Senate and its powerful Judiciary Committee, died Thursday night at the age of 90.
Long before this debate about age, Feinstein, a Democrat, was a trailblazer for women and a champion for many landmark initiatives.
In a tribute to Feinstein on the Senate floor on Friday morning, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, called Feinstein “elegant, graceful, kind, compassionate, strong, informed, intelligent.”
“The Senate and the country have lost a model senator,” Collins said.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski called the attention to Feinstein’s failing health in recent months “grossly unfair attacks.”
“For some who would focus on that, they would fail to appreciate what this extraordinary woman, what this extraordinary leader had contributed not only to the Senate, but to her state, and to her country,” Murkowski said.
Feinstein began her political career on a panel overseeing jail conditions in San Francisco. She then became a member of the city’s board of supervisors. She was one of the first to reach fellow supervisor Harvey Milk after he was shot by a disgruntled former member of the board. Milk and Mayor George Mascone were killed in the November 1978 attack.
After this tragedy, Feinstein became San Francisco’s first female mayor. She later ran unsuccessfully for the California governorship, a campaign that set her up for a successful 1992 run for the U.S. Senate. She was the first female U.S. senator from California and the longest serving female senator.
Although she was from liberal San Francisco, Feinstein was considered a moderate and someone who sought bipartisan common ground. She sometimes frustrated liberals for her moderation, but her willingness to consider and value differing perspectives is sorely needed in Washington today.
She led the crafting of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban, which reduced some types of gun deaths during the 10 years that it was in effect. As the first female chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein led the panel’s eyeopening review and reporting on the CIA’s use of torture of suspected terrorists held at U.S. detention facilities.
“I recognize that women have had to fight for everything they have gotten, every right,” Feinstein told The Associated Press in 2005.
“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.
“As the first woman ever elected senator of the nation’s most populous state, she broke the glass ceiling many times over,” Maine’s 1st District Rep. Chellie Pingree said of Feinstein in a statement on Friday. “From spearheading passage of a federal assault weapons ban to pushing an investigation into the use of torture after 9/11, her pathbreaking work will be remembered.”
Feinstein’s reach extended far beyond Washington and California.
“Dianne Feinstein was an inspiration to me not only as as a trailblazing woman in politics, but for her effective and unapologetic leadership, often ahead of others, on LGBTQ+ rights, abortion access, gun safety, ending torture, and protecting the environment,” Emily Cain, a former Maine legislator and former executive director of EMILYs List, a group that recruits and supports female candidates, told the Bangor Daily News editorial board. “She always showed up for those who needed help and led from a place of wanting to do the right thing and bring the most people together to do it.”
Dianne Feinstein’s political career began in an era of violence and ended in a time of great division. Her tireless work, on behalf of the people of California and the U.S., is a reminder of the need for leaders who are both strong and intelligent, but also compassionate and kind.
