Dianne Feinstein born Dianne Emiel Goldman; was an American politician who served as a United States senator from California from 1992 until her death in 2023.
A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988. A San Francisco native, Feinstein graduated from Stanford University in 1955.
She was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969 and served as the board’s first female president in 1978, during which time the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk drew national attention.
Dianne Feinstein succeeded Moscone as mayor and became the first woman to serve in that position.
During her tenure, she led the renovation of the city’s cable car system and oversaw the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
Despite a recall attempt in 1983, Feinstein was a popular mayor and was named the most effective mayor in the country by City & State in 1987.
After losing a race for governor in 1990, Feinstein was elected to the U.S. Senate in a 1992 special election.
In November 1992, she became California’s first female U.S. senator; shortly afterward, she became the state’s senior senator after Alan Cranston retired in January 1993.
Feinstein was reelected five times. In the 2012 election, she received 7.86 million votes, the most popular votes received by any U.S. Senate candidate in history.
Dianne Feinstein authored the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban.
Dianne Feinstein was the first woman to have chaired the Senate Rules Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee and the first woman to have presided over a U.S. presidential inauguration.
She chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee from 2009 to 2015 and was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021.
By the time of her death, she was the oldest sitting U.S. senator and member of Congress.
She was also the longest-serving U.S. senator from California, the longest-tenured female senator in history, and the senior Democratic member of the Senate.
In February 2023, Feinstein announced she would not seek reelection in 2024.
During her final years in office, as she aged and her health declined, there were concerns about her mental fitness to serve.
Dianne Feinstein died in office on September 29, 2023, at the age of 90.
Who was Dianne Feinstein?
Dianne Feinstein was born Dianne Emiel Goldman on June 22, 1933 in San Francisco to Leon Goldman, a prominent surgeon; and his wife Betty (née Rosenburg), a former model.
Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her maternal grandparents, the Rosenburgs, were from Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Although they were of German-Jewish ancestry, they practiced the Russian Orthodox (Christian) faith, as was required for Jews in Saint Petersburg.
Christianity was passed down to Feinstein’s mother, who insisted on her transferral from a Jewish day school to a prestigious local Catholic school, but Feinstein listed her religion as Judaism.
She graduated from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in 1951 and from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in history.
According to multiple sources, Feinstein’s mother was abusive. Feinstein’s sister, Yvonne Banks, said their mother had unpredictable moods.
Later, Feinstein’s mother received a brain scan that found that the part of her brain responsible for “judgment” had atrophied, “possibly because of complications from a severe illness as a child”,
Early Political Career
From 1955 to 1956, Dianne Feinstein was a fellow at San Francisco’s Coro Foundation, and she served on the California Women’s Parole Board from 1960 to 1966 after being appointed by California Governor Pat Brown.
Feinstein also served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from January 1970 to December 1978 and was elected president of the board in 1978.
She ran for mayor of San Francisco (unsuccessfully) in 1971 and 1975. In the 1970s, the New World Liberation Front terrorist group targeted Dianne, leaving a bomb on a windowsill at her home.
The bomb didn’t detonate due to the fact that the temperature dropped below freezing that night, but the group later decided to shoot out the windows of Feinstein’s beach house.
Mayor of San Francisco
On November 27, 1978, former Board of Supervisors member Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall. Dianne Feinstein discovered Milk’s body in his office just after the shootings occurred.
She took on the role of acting mayor, and after the Board of Supervisors voted in favor of officially appointing Feinstein mayor, she was inaugurated on December 4, 1978.
In 1979, the city’s cable car system was shut down for emergency repairs, and Dianne was instrumental in getting federal funding for the $60 million rebuilding the system needed.
In 1982, Feinstein vetoed domestic partnership legislation, causing anger and disappointment among San Francisco’s gay community.
In 1984, Dianne proposed banning handguns in the city, and the White Panther Party tried to have her removed from office, but Feinstein was victorious in the recall election.
Dianne was named the country’s “Most Effective Mayor” by “City and State” magazine in 1987, and she finished her second term on January 8, 1988.
U.S. Senate Career
After Dianne Feinstein unsuccessfully ran for governor against Pete Wilson, a special election was held to fill Wilson’s Senate seat. Dianne won and took office in November 1992, becoming California’s senior senator and America’s first female Jewish senator.
Feinstein has been re-elected five times, and in 2012, she set the record for the highest number of popular votes in a U.S. Senate election with 7.75 million votes.
Ahead of the 2018 election, the California Democratic Party’s executive board chose to endorse State Senator Kevin de León instead of Dianne, but she won the “jungle primary” and was re-elected in November.
During her time in the Senate, Feinstein has sponsored more than 60 bills, such as the REAL PEACE Act of 2018, Keep Families Together Act, Affordable Health Insurance for the Middle Class Act, and Gun Violence Prevention Order Act of 2017.
Dianne has served as the Chair of the Senate Rules Committee and Senate Narcotics Caucus as well as the Chair and Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
All about Dianne Feinstein husbands
Who was Dianne Feinstein married to?
Dianne Feinstein was married three times. Over the course of her storied political career, which also included being the longest-serving senator from California, Feinstein was married to Jack Berman, Bertram Feinstein and Richard C. Blum.
Her first marriage to Berman in 1956 lasted four years and he later died in 2002. She remarried to her second husband, Bertram Feinstein, in 1962 and he died in 1978. Two years later, in 1980, she married Blum and was with him until his passing in 2022.
Read on for more details on Dianne Feinstein’s three husbands, Berman, Feinstein and Blum.
Jack Berman
Berman was father to the late senator’s only child, Katherine Feinstein, and was a Navy veteran of World War II.
He married Dianne Feinstein , then Dianne Goldman, in 1946, but they divorced four years later in 1960.
he Navy vet attended University of California Berkeley for his bachelor’s and his law degree and was a judge, a socialite and a civil rights advocate in San Francisco, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Some of his career milestones included serving as a defense counsel for the War Crimes Tribunal in Manila from 1946 to 1947 and being appointed Superior Court judge in 1982. He also loved boxing, according to his alma mater.
Berman later died in 2002 at age 80 after sustaining some head injuries from a fall while playing a game of tennis, according to the Los Angeles Times. He was married to Terry Berman at the time.
Bertram Feinstein
Bertram Feinstein was a native of Winnipeg, a city in Manitoba, Canada, and studied at the local university and medical school there before attending Oxford University in England.
He was a neurosurgeon and joined Berkeley’s faculty in 1946 as a neurosurgery instructor and research associate, according to the San Francisco Examiner.
He later joined Mount Zion hospital in 1953 and, during different stents, served as director of the hospital’s neurological institute and co-director of its pain center, per the San Francisco Examiner.
The newspaper also reported that he died at his home at age 64 in 1978 after battling a long illness. His wife, Dianne, was right by his side, the newspaper said. She was president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at the time.
Richard C. Blum
Richard Blum, Feinstein’s third husband, was chairman of his own equity investment management firm, Blum Capital Partners, which at one time had Bank of America as a client.
According to the New York Times, he became Dianne Feinstein’s companion in 1979 just after she became a widow.
After she won her mayoral campaign in San Francisco in 1979, the two were married in 1980. A few years later, in 1983, he helped his wife raise $400,000 to fend off a recall attempt.
Blum died from cancer in 2022 at age 86, the New York Times reported. He had three daughters, Annette, Heidi and Eileen, from a previous marriage.
At the time of his death, Dianne Feinstein issued a statement of mourning.
“My heart is broken today,” she wrote. “My husband was my partner and best friend for more than 40 years. He was by my side for the good times and for the challenges. I am going to miss him terribly.”
She added that he was a role model to many and his absence is greatly felt.
“We have a hole in our hearts that will never be filled,” she wrote. “Dick, we love you, we’ll miss you and we’ll continue to celebrate everything you accomplished during an amazing life.”
Dianne Feinstein Children
How many children did Dianne Feinstein have?
Katherine Anne Feinstein is the only biological child of the late United States Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and her first husband Judge Jack K. Berman.
After her mother’s marriage to Bertram Feinstein in 1962 she took her stepfather’s last name.
She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (1980) and Hastings Law School (1984).
Who is Katherine Feinstein?
Katherine Anne Feinstein is an American attorney, public official, and former judge who currently serves as President of the San Francisco Fire Commission.
Feinstein previously served as Presiding Judge of the San Francisco Superior Court from 2010 to 2012 and as a Superior Court judge from 2000 to 2012.
She is married to Rick Mariano; they have one daughter, Eileen Feinstein Mariano.
Eileen Feinstein Mariano was chosen as an Electoral College member for the 2016 United States presidential election.
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