Dianne Feinstein (D), the first Jewish woman elected to the U.S. Senate, died on September 29, 2023. Feinstein became California’s first female U.S. senator in 1992 and was reelected five times.
In her early career, she was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the legislative body within the government of San Francisco. She remained on the board for nine years, serving as its first female president.
Mayor of San Francisco
In 1978, Feinstein became the mayor of San Francisco, CA. She was seen as a relatively moderate Democrat in one of the country’s most liberal cities. As mayor, Feinstein ordered the repair of the San Francisco cable car system, won federal funding for the bulk of the work, and oversaw policies to increase the number of San Francisco’s high-rise buildings.
Feinstein became a less progressive Democrat as her career progressed and began to vote against specific policies that she previously supported. She angered the city’s large gay community in 1982 by vetoing legislation that would have extended city-employee benefits to domestic partners and expanded the health insurance benefits that now go to husbands and wives of city employees to homosexuals. While she had been known for her work in environmental conservation, she later became less progressive in her career by overriding bills for species protection. She worked to restore Lake San Joaquin but then later reversed protection for fish in that same river.
In 1982, Feinstein banned handguns in San Francisco. Finally, she supported abortion rights, stating that “the only option is for Congress to pass a law to restore women’s reproduction rights and ensure control over their own bodies.”
Senator of California
As senator, Feinstein was known for championing women’s reproductive rights. She continued to support abortion rights and voted against a proposal to ban a method of abortion referred to as partial-birth abortion in 2003. After the Supreme Court ruled against abortion rights in 2022, Feinstein called for congressional action to protect abortion rights.
Additionally, she continued her work to mitigate climate change by authoring a provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, mandating that all significant sources of greenhouse gasses annually report their emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2017, Senator Feinstein became the first woman to be the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she helped shape policies on criminal law, national security, immigration, and civil rights. In the fall of 2020, Feinstein experienced cognitive decline and short-term memory loss until she died in 2023. Despite her passing, Feinstein will always be remembered for her outstanding work and life-long political commitment.
