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Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the longest-serving woman in the U.S. Senate, has died at age 90 after more than 30 years in Congress and a groundbreaking career in politics. Punchbowl News was first to report her death.
Feinstein achieved several firsts and broke barriers throughout her more than half-century career in California and national politics. She was first elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and became the first woman to lead the board in 1978.
Feinstein then became the city’s first woman mayor following the 1978 dual assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a prominent LGBTQ+ politician and advocate, by rival politician Dan White.
Feinstein herself discovered their bodies after seeing White fleeing Milk’s office. She was the one to announce their deaths in a news conference and was appointed to the mayor’s office afterward.
The gruesome incident made Feinstein a lifelong advocate for gun control laws — she tried to ban handguns in San Francisco, leading to an attempt to recall her as mayor, and then spearheaded the passage of the 1994 assault weapons ban through Congress. It also gave her a thick skin.
“I’ve been in worse situations, I’ve seen people shot and killed, I’ve found dead people, all of that, so this is not a big deal,” Feinstein told the Wall Street Journal at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
After over a decade leading San Francisco and an unsuccessful 1990 run for governor, Feinstein ran in and won a special election to the U.S. Senate in 1992. Feinstein and former Sen. Barbara Boxer became California’s first woman senators that year, dubbed “The Year of the Woman” for the number of women elected to offices around the country.
In recent years, Feinstein faced increasing scrutiny over her fitness to serve after a number of reports of staffers and those around her describing declining cognitive ability and mental acuity.
Feinstein announced in February that she wouldn’t seek reelection when her current term ends after 2024, creating an already-crowded and expensive primary race for her seat. Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint someone to fill her seat until the 2024 election.
The candidates running to succeed her are Rep. Barbara Lee, a longtime progressive member of Congress from the East Bay Area; Rep. Adam Schiff, who rose to prominence for his investigations of former President Donald Trump; and Rep. Katie Porter, an Orange County progressive first elected to Congress in 2018 known as a dogged questioner of corporate executives.
This story was originally published by The 19th