US Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a moderate Democrat elected to the Senate in 1992 who broke gender barriers throughout her long career in politics, died this Friday at the age of 90.
Feinstein, the oldest U.S. senator, supported Democratic issues important to her state, including environmental protection, reproductive rights and gun control, but she was also known as a pragmatic congresswoman who reached out to Republicans to find compromise solutions. .
Feinstein was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and became the first woman to lead that body in 1978, the year House Speaker George Moscone was shot to death.
After Moscone’s death, Feinstein became San Francisco’s first female mayor.
On Capitol Hill in Washington, she was one of California’s first two senators, the first woman to head the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the first woman to serve as top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
“I recognize that women had to fight for everything they achieved, for all their rights,” Feinstein acknowledged in 2005.
Her penchant for bipartisanship helped her achieve legislative victories throughout her career, but also proved a problem in her later years in Congress, as California voters became more liberal and the Senate became increasingly polarized. further.
The California senator became known for her verbal criticism and blunt responses when questioned about issues she was passionate about.
In February of this year, Feinstein announced that she would not run for her sixth term the following year and, just weeks after this announcement, she was absent from the Senate for more than two months while she recovered from a debilitating illness, abandoning her. her positions in the Senate and Congress.
Source: TSF
