Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior senator, is a Democrat first elected in 1992. Feinstein grew up in San Francisco in lush Presidio Heights, the daughter of a doctor who hoped she would follow him into the profession. In her first semester at Stanford University, Feinstein got a D in genetics and decided she did not have the aptitude for medicine. But she did love a class she took on American political thought. She graduated with a degree in criminology and then, while doing an internship, wrote a paper about post-conviction phases of the justice system that she thought contained valuable ideas for the state of California. Feinstein sent her paper to Gov. Pat Brown. Despite her youth—she was just 27—the governor appointed her to the California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole. In 1969 she won her first election, to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors. Feinstein went on to become president of the board and in 1978, was suddenly catapulted to mayor when Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot to death by former Supervisor Dan White. Feinstein discovered Moscone’s body and in the subsequent weeks, displayed a steadiness and a sense of command that calmed the city. She was elected to full terms in 1979 and 1983. In 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale seriously considered her for vice president, but passed over her for Geraldine Ferraro because of qualms about the business dealings of Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum. She presided gracefully that year over the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, while ironically, Ferraro juggled questions about her family’s business dealings. Read More

Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior senator, is a Democrat first elected in 1992. Feinstein grew up in San Francisco in lush Presidio Heights, the daughter of a doctor who hoped she would follow him into the profession. In her first semester at Stanford University, Feinstein got a D in genetics and decided she did not have the aptitude for medicine. But she did love a class she took on American political thought. She graduated with a degree in criminology and then, while doing an internship, wrote a paper about post-conviction phases of the justice system that she thought contained valuable ideas for the state of California. Feinstein sent her paper to Gov. Pat Brown. Despite her youth—she was just 27—the governor appointed her to the California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole. In 1969 she won her first election, to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors. Feinstein went on to become president of the board and in 1978, was suddenly catapulted to mayor when Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot to death by former Supervisor Dan White. Feinstein discovered Moscone’s body and in the subsequent weeks, displayed a steadiness and a sense of command that calmed the city. She was elected to full terms in 1979 and 1983. In 1984, Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale seriously considered her for vice president, but passed over her for Geraldine Ferraro because of qualms about the business dealings of Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum. She presided gracefully that year over the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, while ironically, Ferraro juggled questions about her family’s business dealings.

Ineligible for a third term, Feinstein left the mayor’s office in 1987 and ran for governor in 1990. She won the Democratic primary impressively, then lost 49%-46% to Republican Pete Wilson. When Wilson appointed Orange County state Sen. John Seymour—an unknown and bland choice—to replace him in the Senate, Feinstein quickly announced for the seat. She had primary competition from Gray Davis, then state controller, who ran an ad against her campaign-finance practices and compared her to haughty New York billionaire Leona Helmsley, who went to jail for tax evasion. Feinstein won 58%-33%, and after that, her relations with Davis, elected governor in 1998 and 2002, were never warm. Davis was forced out of office in a 2003 recall election. In the 1992 general election, nothing worked for the hapless Seymour, the appointed GOP incumbent—not his switch from having opposed abortion rights to favoring them, not his attempt to play on fears of illegal immigration and not his attacks on Feinstein’s arguably tricky financing of her 1990 gubernatorial campaign, which resulted in a $190,000 fine. Feinstein won 54%-38%, coming close even in Seymour’s Southern California base.

In the Senate, Feinstein kept a distance from the Clinton administration, negotiating for changes before voting for its 1993 budget, voting against the North American Free Trade Agreement, and withdrawing her support of the Clinton health care plan. Feinstein had two significant legislative achievements in her first two years. One was a ban on assault weapons in 1994. When Idaho Republican Larry Craig argued that her definition of assault weapons was not rigorous enough and challenged her knowledge of firearms, she stopped the argument in its tracks by reminding the Senate of the horrific tragedy earlier in her political career. “I know something about what firearms can do,” Feinstein said. “I came to be mayor of San Francisco as a product of assassination.” (In 2000, she sponsored an unsuccessful bill to require licensing of all guns and in 2004 pressed fervently for reauthorization of the 1994 assault-weapons ban. The act expired in September 2004.) Her other achievement in her early Senate years was the California Desert Protection Act, which had long been held up by the state’s Republican senators as too restrictive.

Feinstein has had a moderate to liberal voting record and has differed on some issues from her colleague and Bay Area neighbor, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. She supported the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and the Iraq war resolution in 2002, although two years later she said she had been misled into voting for the war by an exaggeration of the threat and regretted her vote. Feinstein supported the GOP’s Medicare prescription drug bill in 2003 as well. With Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, she co-sponsored a bill to bar entry to the United States for people from nations that sponsor terrorism, which became law in 2002.

On the Judiciary Committee, Feinstein took an active role in the immigration debate in recent years. She favors a guest worker program for agricultural workers and would allow illegal aliens with U.S. work history to obtain “blue cards” to allow them to work for two years. In the debate on immigration in 2006, she and Boxer proposed a 20-year sentence for people caught building or financing underground cross-border tunnels, which became part of the border fence bill that passed both houses. On other issues, Feinstein disagreed with other Democrats who claimed the USA PATRIOT Act, the Bush administration’s centerpiece anti-terrorism law, had led to violations of civil liberties, a statement cited by President Bush in pressing for renewal of the act. She also was the only Democrat on the committee to vote in 2006 for the amendment authorizing prosecutions for flag desecration.

In 2005, Feinstein was less bipartisan in the war over some of President Bush’s judicial nominees, but she also was frequently willing to compromise in the end. With other Judiciary Democrats, she opposed several nominees to the federal appeals court. But then, with Boxer, she made an arrangement with the Bush administration to set up six-member panels to decide on the potential merits of federal trial judges in California. Three members were appointed by each side, and four votes were required to approve a nominee. In May 2005, Feinstein voted against the nomination of conservative nominee Priscilla Owen, but declined to take the harsher step of a filibuster. After an interview with Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in July 2005, she called him “very impressive” but opposed his confirmation nonetheless, out of concern that he might overturn the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. After Harriet Miers’ nomination for the high court was withdrawn in October 2005, Feinstein said, “I don’t believe they would have attacked a man the way she was attacked.”

Feinstein has become an outspoken proponent of gay rights in recent years. In February 2011, she introduced a measure to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which established that U.S. law recognizes only heterosexual marriages and prevents gay couples from receiving federal benefits. Feinstein was one of only 14 senators who voted against the initial bill (most Democrats supported it, and the bill was signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton). The Obama White House endorsed Feinstein’s repeal of DOMA in July 2011, and a markup of the bill was scheduled by the Senate Judiciary Committee in November of that year. Feinstein was featured in an advertisement opposing California’s Proposition 8, which ultimately passed and amended the state Constitution to declare that only marriage between a man and a woman would be recognized. When the film Milk, about the assassination of the gay rights leader, was released to critical acclaim in 2008, Feinstein told The New York Times that she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to watch it. “It’s very painful for me,” she said. Feinstein also said in the same interview that she’s evolved on the issue of gay marriage. “I started out not supporting it. The longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve seen the happiness of people, the stability that these commitments bring to a life.”

In January 2009, Feinstein became chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and indicated she wanted to clean house at the intelligence agencies. “My view is that it’s time for a new start,” she said. “I want to see the Senate Intelligence Committee with much closer oversight and a much closer relationship with the intelligence community.” When former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta was announced as Obama’s choice for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, she said that she thought Obama should have appointed “an intelligence professional.” But after Vice President Joseph Biden said it was a mistake not to have informed her in advance of the appointment, she was conciliatory, saying, “I’m very respectful of the president’s authority, and if this is the man he wants, then that means a lot to me.”

Feinstein doesn’t hesitate to go her own way on the committee. In 2007, she supported immunity for telecommunications companies that had allowed the government to listen in on telephone calls from suspected terrorists abroad to persons in the United States, though many Democrats opposed immunity. Feinstein attached amendments to the 2007 and 2008 intelligence authorization bills to require that all government interrogations be conducted under the rules of the Army Field Manual, and she attempted to apply that standard to government contractors as well. In January 2009, she called for closing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which she called a “failed experiment,” and for banning the CIA from using private contractors as interrogators. In February 2009, she was criticized for disclosing that Predator drones directed at extremists near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border were launched from bases in Pakistan; a Feinstein aide said that the fact had been revealed in The Washington Post months earlier. In December 2009, she supported President Obama’s decision to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. “It’s very important that women’s rights be considered and be part of this,” she said.

Feinstein frequently joins with Republicans in the time-honored method of getting legislation passed through compromise. In January 2009, she and conservative Sen. John Cornyn of Texas co-sponsored a bill to create a permanent commission to guarantee the financial viability of Social Security and Medicare. In March 2009, she and Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont hammered out a compromise creating clearer requirements in patent infringement cases. With Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, she introduced a bill in 2009 to reduce gradually the tariff on Brazilian sugar ethanol, and with Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, she called for duty-free imports of apparel from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. In 2010, she co-sponsored a ban on BPA plastic widely used in food containers, though it was not included in the food safety bill passed in 2010. Also that year, she won wide agreement on a national registry for convicted arsonists and bombers.

On the Senate Rules Committee, Feinstein has worked on institutional reforms. She co-sponsored a requirement that earmarks added to spending bills be posted on the Internet for at least 24 hours. She was in the spotlight in January 2009, when former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris, a Democrat, was appointed by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill Obama’s Senate seat. Democratic leaders initially said they would refuse to seat him because his appointment was tainted by allegations that Blagojevich had demanded political favors in exchange. Feinstein argued that Burris should be seated, and prevailed. She said: “The question, really, is one, in my view, of law. And that is, does the governor have the power to make the appointment? And the answer is yes. Is the governor discredited? And the answer is yes. Does that affect his appointment power? And the answer is no, until certain things happen.” Burris, after being turned back at the door of the Capitol, was seated. As Rules chairman, Feinstein also presided over Obama’s inauguration ceremonies on Jan. 20, 2009.

With a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, Feinstein has sought public and private funding to protect old-growth redwoods in the Headwaters Forest and salt ponds in the San Francisco Bay area and to prohibit development, including solar plants and wind farms, on an additional 1 million acres in the Mojave Desert. In September 2009, she urged the Interior Department to reconsider decisions cutting off water to the Central Valley to protect the allegedly endangered delta smelt and in February 2010, she backed an amendment to increase water delivery to the Valley.

She is more accommodating of trade ties with China than San Francisco neighbor Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader. Feinstein has supported trade with China since she established a sister-city relationship in 1990 between San Francisco and Shanghai. She opposed Pelosi’s efforts to impose penalties on China because of its human rights violations. In 2005, Feinstein called on China to crack down on piracy of intellectual property and to revalue its currency, but she opposed a bipartisan bill to impose 27.5% tariffs on Chinese goods if it did not revalue.

Feinstein has had only one serious challenge since she was elected to the Senate, in the Republican year of 1994. U.S. Rep. Michael Huffington spent $30 million of his own money running against her and pulled even in the polls in September. Feinstein was frustrated that she could not count on outspending him. Huffington slipped when it was revealed that he and his wife, Arianna Huffington, employed an illegal alien as a nanny. (Arianna Huffington now runs the liberal Huffington Post blog.) On the Thursday before the election, it was revealed that Feinstein, despite her earlier denials, had employed a woman whose work permit had expired. The media ran stories casting doubt on assertions that the woman was an illegal alien. That probably made the difference. Feinstein won 47%–45%. She carried Los Angeles County 52%-40% and the San Francisco Bay Area 63%-30%, offsetting Huffington’s margins in Southern California and the rest of the state.

In 2000, Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell, a libertarian Stanford Law professor, challenged her. Feinstein far outspent him, $10.3 million to $4.4 million, and won 56%-37%, carrying all of the major regions of the state. In her 2006 re-election contest, Republicans nominated conservative former state Sen. Richard Mountjoy. Feinstein spent $8 million on her campaign, while Mountjoy spent just $195,000. She won 59%-35%. In 2009, Feinstein was being mentioned as a possible candidate for governor in 2010. Polls showed her ahead but in February 2010 she declined to run. Her Senate seat comes up in 2012.

A surprising California Field Poll in September 2011 showed that Feinstein could be vulnerable: just 41 percent of voters approved of her job performance, and 44 percent of voters said they would not vote to re-elect her. Compounding problems for Feinstein is the scandal involving her former campaign treasurer, Kinde Durkee. Durkee was arrested in early September for allegedly stealing huge sums of money from her California clients, including an estimated $4.7 million from Feinstein’s campaign accounts. In response, Feinstein donated $5 million of her own money to her re-election campaign, and she sued Durkee, her firm, and a bank that Feinstein’s attorneys claimed was negligent on the matter.