Dianne Feinstein was at the center of a key LGBTQ+ moment. She's being lauded as an evolving ally
Dianne Feinstein once stood at the center of a pivotal moment in LGBTQ+ history. Decades later, in death, she's being lauded by LGBTQ+ leaders as a longtime ally who, if she didn't always initially do the right thing, was able to learn and evolve.
Feinstein was president of the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors when she stood behind reporters’ microphones in November 1978 and grimly announced: “Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed. The suspect is Supervisor Dan White.”
George Moscone was the liberal mayor of San Francisco; Milk was California’s first openly gay elected official. White was a disgruntled former fellow county supervisor who was the board’s sole vote against a gay anti-discrimination ordinance. And Feinstein, at age 45, found herself at the helm of a global center of gay life that, already roiled by the violence, was about to be further upended by AIDS.
She rose to the challenge and then some, advocates said after Feinstein, the nation's oldest sitting U.S. senator, died Friday at age 90.
“Senator Feinstein stood with our community back when few others did, fighting for funding and action to combat the AIDS crisis when most elected officials chose to look away,” the advocacy group Equality California said in a news release Friday.
Feinstein had a tense relationship with Milk but later championed his legacy, Stuart Milk, the assassinated supervisor's nephew and a family spokesperson, said in an interview.
“She had become a consistent supporter of LGBTQ inclusion after a harder road for her to get there,” Milk said, noting that she was a sponsor of the Navy ship named for his uncle.
The Human Rights Campaign, a large LGBTQ+ advocacy group, cited Feinstein’s “sterling record of support for the LGBTQ+ community."
Feinstein, a Democrat, voted against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which banned federal recognition of same sex marriage, and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that required LGBTQ+ military service members to stay in the closet.
Related video: Mourners begin paying respects to Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco (KCRA Sacramento) Duration 3:24 View on Watch
“It makes no sense to ask our gay and lesbian soldiers to put their lives on the line, while at the same time asking them to live in the shadows,” Feinstein said in a 2010 statement when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was being repealed.
The Human Rights Campaign pointed out she was also a sponsor of the Respect for Marriage Act, which President Joe Biden signed in 2022 to solidify the right to same-sex marriage.
But Feinstein could be polarizing, especially on her home turf.
She drew the ire of Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor and future California governor, by saying that his issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, in violation of state law, was an action that was “too much, too fast, too soon” and motivated conservative voters who gave Republican President George W. Bush a second term.
And, in the 1980s, her mayoral administration caused an outcry in some quarters for closing gay bathhouses to help stem the spread of HIV/AIDS.
But at the same time, “she dedicated huge amounts of city resources and funding, more so than the federal government was doing at that time, to try to stem the spread of this disease that was killing gay men in the city,” said Matthew S. Bajko, an editor and political columnist for the Bay Area Reporter, an influential LGBTQ+ newspaper.
Feinstein visited an AIDS hospice in Los Angeles in 1990 during her unsuccessful campaign for governor, telling patients, “I was there at the beginning and I hope I’m there at the end,” the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
"No one could ever say she was, you know, the biggest champion of LGBTQ issues and people when she started her journey," said Kierra Johnson, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. “What I think is so powerful about who she is, is that we saw her evolve over time.”
Feinstein was the one who had found the bullet-riddled body of her colleague Milk, who was later celebrated in the book “The Mayor of Castro Street” by journalist Randy Shilts, the Academy Award-winning documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk,” and the Hollywood biopic “Milk,” starring Sean Penn.
“I remember it, actually, as if it was yesterday. And it was one of the hardest moments, if not the hardest moment, of my life,” Feinstein told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008. “It was a devastating moment. For San Francisco, it was a day of infamy.”
She told the newspaper she believed White, who was convicted of manslaughter and died by suicide in 1985 after his release, was motivated by feelings of personal and political betrayal, not homophobia.
Still, she said, the assassinations “helped form who I am and what I believe.”
Jeff Mcmillan, The Associated Press
The Dianne Feinstein they knew: Women of the Senate remember a tireless fighter and a true friend
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Washington Sen. Patty Murray received a call early Friday morning that Sen. Dianne Feinstein had died, she immediately started calling her fellow female senators.
The Democrat’s first call was to Republican Sen. Susan Collins, who had worked with Feinstein almost as long as she had. Murray and Feinstein were elected in 1992 — “the year of the woman” — and Collins was elected just four years later. Murray then called several other female Senate colleagues, hastily arranging a tribute.
“My immediate response was my women Senate colleagues that have been her friends and her family for so long, and that we needed to be together on the floor.” Murray said in an interview in her Capitol office Friday afternoon.
They were all there when the Senate opened at 10 a.m., just hours after Feinstein had died at her home in Washington after serving more than three decades in the Senate. Standing near Feinstein’s Senate desk, now draped in black cloth, the senators — along with some of their male colleagues — described her indomitable, fierce intelligence, her impact on the Senate and her deep knowledge of every issue she touched. They talked about how she had paved the way for so many women as the first female mayor of San Francisco, one of California’s first two female senators and the first female chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
But the women also talked about their private times with Feinstein that were at odds with her tough public persona -- how she would invite them out to dinners, how she would sometimes give them the clothes off her back, and how she brought them together for bipartisan gatherings as their ranks in the Senate grew from just a handful to one-quarter of the chamber. Several of them teared up as they spoke.
It was a peek into Feinstein’s friendships and also the private, collegial side of the Senate that the public rarely sees — and that has faded in recent years as Congress has become more partisan and divided. Feinstein often received criticism from the left flank for her bipartisanship.
“I think it’s important that people understand that here in the United States Senate, a place that can be so divisive at times, that true friendships actually exist,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican.
Murkowski spoke about sharing dinners with Feinstein when the Senate would stay in town over a weekend and they weren’t able to fly home to their faraway states. She joked that Feinstein, always impeccably dressed, probably wouldn’t have approved of the shoes she was wearing.
As the senators spoke, Feinstein's daughter Katherine watched from the gallery, sitting with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Members of California's House delegation lined the back wall.
Collins said Feinstein held an engagement party for her before she was married more than a decade ago. She displayed a painting that Feinstein had painted for her that now hangs in her office “and will have a place of honor there always,” Collins said.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said that when attending an event in San Francisco around 15 years ago, Feinstein invited her to stay the night at her mansion in the city. When Klobuchar woke up early the next morning, Feinstein summoned her to her room, where she was wearing fuzzy slippers -- and reading a 200-page bill. She proceeded to quiz Klobuchar on the details.
“That was Dianne,” Klobuchar said, noting that the California Democrat had to work harder than everyone else as she rose up through politics at a time when there were so few women.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., also brought a drawing Feinstein had given her and wore red lipstick in her honor. Murray told a story about admiring one of Feinstein’s purses, and then receiving one in the mail from the California senator a few days later. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said she was wearing shoes she said Feinstein had once admired.
Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, was wearing a scarf Feinstein had given her on the spot when she had told her she liked it.
“She just took it off and gave it to me,” Hirono said. “We had to be careful about admiring anything Dianne had, because she would likely take it off and give it to us.”
Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican, said Feinstein was “particularly kind to other women senators. She was the first to invite other women senators to dinner, to lead our gatherings and to focus our attention on things that are good for all Americans without regard to political ideology.”
Feinstein was one of the leaders and hosts of regular bipartisan dinners with all the women of the Senate, even as the group got a bit too large for them all to sit around one table and as the gatherings became a bit less frequent.
When eating with Feinstein, said Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Feinstein “would have a little parting gift for you, a little coin purse or something to show you just truly who she was.”
Speaking at an event Friday, former New York Sen. Hillary Clinton told her own story about a gathering at Feinstein’s home.
After she lost the Democratic presidential primary to Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton said, she called Feinstein when the two former opponents — and then-senators — wanted to talk privately and weren’t sure how to do so without attracting attention. Clinton said she and Obama ended up in Feinstein's living room, talking about what Clinton would do to support the future president while Feinstein would occasionally pop in, asking if they wanted more Chardonnay.
“I had total trust in her,” Clinton said at The Atlantic Festival in Washington.
For Murray and Collins, one of the places where they had worked most closely with Feinstein was on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which Murray now leads with Collins as the top Republican. The three women served together for decades on the committee, which is known for its bipartisanship.
One of the female senators Murray contacted Friday morning was Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, a first-term Republican and former staffer on the Appropriations Committee. Britt texted back that Feinstein had blazed a trail for her, along with Murray, and asked to sit with the other women senators on the floor during the tribute. “My heart is so sad,” Britt texted her.
Murray said the text brought her to tears.
“There was a side of Dianne that most people probably never saw, which all of us who are so lucky to be her friends here saw,” Murray said.
On the Senate floor, Murray teared up again as she recalled seeing Feinstein there just Thursday, casting her last vote.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t hug her when she went back out that door yesterday,” Murray said.
Mary Clare Jalonick, The Associated Press
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, trailblazer and champion of liberal priorities, dies at age 90
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a centrist Democrat and champion of liberal causes who was elected to the Senate in 1992 and broke gender barriers throughout her long career in local and national politics, has died. She was 90.
Feinstein died on Friday morning at her home in Washington, D.C., her office said. Tributes poured in all day. Opening the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that “we lost a giant in the Senate.”
“As the nation mourns this tremendous loss, we know how many lives she impacted and how many glass ceilings she shattered along the way," Schumer said, his voice cracking.
President Joe Biden, who served with Feinstein for years in the Senate, called her “a pioneering American,” a “true trailblazer” and a “cherished friend."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom will appoint a temporary replacement, and there is sure to be a spirited battle to succeed her.
Feinstein, the oldest sitting U.S. senator, was a passionate advocate for liberal priorities important to her state -- including environmental protection, reproductive rights and gun control -- but was also known as a pragmatic lawmaker who reached out to Republicans and sought middle ground.
Her death came after a bout of shingles sidelined her for more than two months earlier this year — an absence that drew frustration from her most liberal critics and launched an unsuccessful attempt by Democrats to temporarily replace her on the Senate Judiciary Committee. When she returned to the Senate in May, she was frail and using a wheelchair, voting only occasionally.
On Friday, her Senate desk was draped in black and topped with a vase of white roses. Senators gave tearful tributes as members of the California House delegation stood in the back of the chamber and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat in the gallery with Feinstein’s daughter, Katherine.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was one of several Republicans who gave tributes to the Democratic icon, calling her his friend. “Dianne was a trailblazer, and her beloved home state of California and our entire nation are better for her dogged advocacy and diligent service,” McConnell said.
Biden said in a statement, “Dianne made her mark on everything from national security to the environment to protecting civil liberties. "Our country will benefit from her legacy for generations.”
Former president Barack Obama also saluted her as “a trailblazer," and former President Bill Clinton called her a champion “of civil rights and civil liberties, environmental protection and strong national security.”
She was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and became its first female board president in 1978, the year Mayor George Moscone was gunned down alongside Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled former supervisor. Feinstein found Milk’s body.
After Moscone’s death, Feinstein became San Francisco's first female mayor. In the Senate, she was one of California’s first two female senators, the first woman to head the Senate Intelligence Committee and the first woman to serve as the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat.
Although Feinstein was not always embraced by the feminist movement, her experiences colored her outlook through her five decades in politics.
"I recognize that women have had to fight for everything they have gotten, every right," she told The Associated Press in 2005, as the Judiciary Committee prepared to hold hearings on President George W. Bush's nomination of John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.
"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.
Feinstein's bipartisan efforts helped her notch legislative wins throughout her career. But it also proved to be a liability in her later years in Congress, as her state became more liberal and as the Senate and the electorate became increasingly polarized.
A fierce debater who did not suffer fools, the California senator was long known for her verbal zingers and sharp comebacks when challenged on the issues about which she was most fervent. But she lost that edge in her later years in the Senate, as her health visibly declined and she sometimes became confused when answering questions or speaking publicly. In February 2023, she said she would not run for a sixth term the next year. And within weeks of that announcement, she was absent for the Senate for more than two months as she recovered from a bout of shingles.
Amid the concerns about her health, Feinstein stepped down as the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel after the 2020 elections, just as her party was about to take the majority. In 2023, she said she would not serve as the Senate president pro tempore, or the most senior member of the majority party, even though she was in line to do so. The president pro tempore opens the Senate every day and holds other ceremonial duties.
One of Feinstein’s most significant legislative accomplishments was early in her career, when the Senate approved her amendment to ban manufacturing and sales of certain types of assault weapons as part of a crime bill that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994. Though the assault weapons ban expired 10 years later and was never renewed or replaced, it was a poignant win after her career had been significantly shaped by gun violence.
Related video: Mourners pay respects to Sen. Dianne Feinstein at San Francisco City Hall (The Associated Press) Duration 1:35 View on Watch
Feinstein remembered finding Milk’s body, her finger slipping into a bullet hole as she felt for a pulse. It was a story she would retell often in the years ahead as she pushed for stricter gun control measures.
She had little patience for Republicans and others who opposed her on that issue, though she was often challenged. In 1993, during debate on the assault weapons ban, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, accused her of having an insufficient knowledge of guns and the gun control issue.
Feinstein spoke fiercely of the violence she’d lived through in San Francisco and retorted: ''Senator, I know something about what firearms can do.”
Two decades later, after 20 children and six educators were killed in a horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, first-term Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas similarly challenged Feinstein during debate on legislation that would have permanently banned the weapons.
"I'm not a sixth grader,” Feinstein snapped back at the much younger Cruz — a moment that later went viral. She added: "It's fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I've been here a long time."
Feinstein became mayor of San Francisco after the 1978 slayings of Moscone and Milk, leading the city during one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Even her critics credited Feinstein with a calming influence, and she won reelection on her own to two four-year terms.
With her success and growing recognition statewide came visibility on the national political stage.
In 1984, Feinstein was viewed as a vice presidential possibility for Walter Mondale but faced questions about the business dealings of her husband, Richard Blum. In 1990, she used news footage of her announcement of the assassinations of Moscone and Milk in a television ad that helped her win the Democratic nomination for California governor, making her the first female major-party gubernatorial nominee in the state's history.
Although she narrowly lost the general election to Republican Pete Wilson, the stage was set for her election to the Senate two years later to fill the Senate seat Wilson had vacated to run for governor.
Feinstein campaigned jointly with Barbara Boxer, who was running for the state's other U.S. Senate seat, and both won, benefiting from positive news coverage and excitement over their historic race. California had never had a female U.S. senator, and female candidates and voters had been galvanized by the Supreme Court hearings in which the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Anita Hill about her sexual harassment allegations against nominee Clarence Thomas.
Feinstein was appointed to the Judiciary panel and eventually the Senate Intelligence Committee, becoming the chairperson in 2009. She was the first woman to lead the intelligence panel, a high-profile perch that gave her a central oversight role over U.S. intelligence controversies, setbacks and triumphs, from the killing of Osama bin Laden to leaks about National Security Agency surveillance.
Under Feinstein’s leadership, the intelligence committee conducted a wide-ranging, five-year investigation into CIA interrogation techniques during President George W. Bush’s administration, including waterboarding of terrorism suspects at secret overseas prisons. The resulting 6,300-page “torture report” concluded among other things that waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not provide key evidence in the hunt for bin Laden. A 525-page executive summary was released in late 2014, but the rest of the report has remained classified.
The Senate investigation was full of intrigue at the time, including documents that mysteriously disappeared and accusations traded between the Senate and the CIA that the other was stealing information. The drama was captured in a 2019 movie about the investigation called “The Report,” and actor Annette Bening was nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Feinstein.
In the years since, Feinstein has continued to push aggressively for eventual declassification of the report.
"It's my very strong belief that one day this report should be declassified," Feinstein said. "This must be a lesson learned: that torture doesn't work."
Feinstein sometimes frustrated liberals by adopting moderate or hawkish positions that put her at odds with the left wing of the Democratic Party, as well as with the more liberal Boxer, who retired from the Senate in 2017. Feinstein defended the Obama administration’s expansive collection of Americans' phone and email records as necessary for protecting the country, for example, even as other Democratic senators voiced protests. “It’s called protecting America,” Feinstein said then.
That tension escalated during Donald Trump’s presidency, when many Democrats had little appetite for compromise. Feinstein became the top Democrat on the Judiciary panel in 2016 and led her party’s messaging through three Supreme Court nominations -- a role that angered liberal advocacy groups that wanted to see a more aggressive partisan in charge.
Feinstein closed out confirmation hearings for Justice Amy Coney Barrett with an embrace of Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and a public thanks to him for a job well done. “This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in,” Feinstein said at the end of the hearing.
Liberal advocacy groups that had fiercely opposed Barrett's nomination to replace the late liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg were furious and called for her to step down from the committee leadership.
A month later, Feinstein announced she would remain on the committee but step down as the top Democrat. The senator, then 87 years old, did not say why. In a statement, she said she would “continue to do my utmost to bring about positive change in the coming years.”
Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933. Her father, Leon Goldman, was a prominent surgeon and medical school professor in San Francisco, but her mother was an abusive woman with a violent temper that was often directed at Feinstein and her two younger sisters.
Feinstein graduated from Stanford University in 1955, with a bachelor’s degree in history. She married young and was a divorced single mother of her daughter, Katherine, in 1960, at a time when such a status was still unusual.
In 1961, Feinstein was appointed by then-Gov. Pat Brown to the women's parole board, on which she served before running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Typical of the era, much of the early coverage of her entrance into public life focused on her appearance rather than her experience and education.
Feinstein's second husband, Bert Feinstein, was 19 years older than she, but she described the marriage as "a 10" and kept his name even after his death from cancer in 1978. In 1980, she married investment banker Richard Blum, and thanks to his wealth, she was one of the richest members of the Senate. He died in February 2022.
In addition to her daughter, Feinstein has a granddaughter, Eileen, and three stepchildren.
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Blood reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.
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In a story published Sept. 29, 2023, about the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, The Associated Press, citing her office, reported that she died Thursday, Sept. 28. Her office later said that the senator died around 2 a.m. Friday, Sept. 29.
Mary Clare Jalonick And Michael R. Blood, The Associated Press
