California Senator Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein, the longest-serving female senator in the history of the United States, died in the early morning of Friday September 29th 2023. She was 90 years of age.
At the time of her death Dianne Feinstein was the oldest active member of Congress, having been first elected to the Senate in 1992 and subsequently re-elected five times. Prior to her time in DC, she served in the city of San Francisco, first as a member of the Board of Supervisors and later as the city's Mayor.
Feinstein enjoyed a long and storied political career filled with a good many key firsts for women:
- 1970: served as the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
- 1978: elected to be the first female mayor of the city of San Francisco.
- 1992: elected as California's first female Senator.
- 2009: became the first woman to chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
- 2009: became the first woman to chair the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and the first woman to preside over a U.S. presidential inauguration (that of Barack Obama).
- 2012: during her re-election bid Feinstein received 7.68 million votes, the most popular votes received by any U.S. Senate candidate in history.
- 2017: became the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the first female to assume the role.
- 2023: at the time of her death she was the oldest sitting U.S. Senator and member of Congress, and the longest-tenured female senator in history.
Feinstein's death gives California Governor Gavin Newsom the opportunity to appoint a lawmaker to serve out the remainder of her term, and comes just a day before the end of the federal fiscal year and a looming government shutdown brought on by continued concerns over out-of-control federal spending. (Under the federal Constitution it is the states that have the power to fill vacancies that arise in the Senate).
This will provide the second opportunity for Governor Newsom to appoint a replacement for the U.S. Senate. The first, Alex Padilla, was appointed to fill the vacancy left open by Kamala Harris when she was elected Vice President of the United States. (Alex Padilla later won his senate seat in the following election cycle).
U.S. Senate incumbents enjoy an unusually high re-election rate. Once elected or appointed to office, their re-election is almost taken as a given. This is certainly true of people like Senator Feinstein, who spent much of her life in office once originally installed. (See the chart below provided by OpenSecrets.org).
Dianne Feinstein was a lot of things, and regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, there is no denying that she was a fighter. She will be remembered as a powerful Senator who paved the way for women who wish to serve in politics. Unfortunately, she will also be remembered as someone whose iron grip on power would not allow her to pass the torch to the next generation.
Human nature being what it is, members of our grassroots wish to see Article V of the U.S. Constitution used to call a convention of states to propose an amendment imposing term limits on congressional and other federal offices. Most Americans understand that the Founding Fathers never meant to see people holding a federal office for an excessive period of time.
That being said, our condolences go out to her family and those who loved her.
