Dianne Feinstein

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Dianne Feinstein
Feinstein as Mayor of San Francisco on board a cable car

Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein (born June 22, 1933 in San Francisco , California ; born Dianne Emiel Goldman ) is an American politician in the Democratic Party , which has represented the state of California in the US Senate since 1992 . She served as the first woman mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988 .

Family, education and work

Dianne Goldman's father, Leon Goldman, was a renowned surgeon who traveled extensively and lectured at academic conferences. She earned a bachelor's degree in history from Stanford University in 1955 .

In 1957 she married Jack Berman, a colleague in the San Francisco District Attorney's office. The marriage ended in divorce three years later. Shortly after starting her career in politics, she married neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein in 1962. He died of colon cancer in 1978. Two years later she married Richard C. Blum, an investment banker who later helped her fund election campaigns. Feinstein is friends with the California Governor Jerry Brown and was maid of honor at his wedding in 2005 .

Political career

Local politics in San Francisco

In 1969 she was elected to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors and thus at the same time admitted to the City Council. Feinstein held this position for nine years and became the first female president of this body. During this time she tried twice to become mayor, without success.

When Councilor Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in November 1978 , Feinstein automatically became Mayor of San Francisco on December 4, 1978 as President of the Board of Supervisors. She remained in office for the remainder of the term, won re-election in 1979, and left office on January 8, 1988. In November 1983, she survived an attempt to recall her from office after proposing a ban on handguns in San Francisco.

She ran for the Democrats in 1990 for governor of California , but was defeated by the Republican Pete Wilson . Feinstein was the first of three women to be nominated by one of the two major parties for the highest office in California.

US Senator

The seat in the United States Senate, which was given up by Wilson, won Feinstein in the following extraordinary by-election in November 1992 against the interim Senator John F. Seymour appointed by Wilson himself and took up the mandate on November 10, 1992. She was re-elected in 1994 , 2000 , 2006 , 2012 and 2018 . In 1998 and 2003, many advised her to run for governor again, which she refused. Feinstein is currently the oldest member of the US Senate.

Feinstein is a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations . In the Senate she sits on the powerful Approval Committee for Federal Funds and the Rules of Procedure committee ; in addition, from 2009 she was the first female chairman of the committee for the intelligence services and temporarily chaired the joint committee for the Library of Congress .

In her role as Chair of the Secret Service Committee, she was also the driving force behind the creation of a more than 6,000-page confidential report ( Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program ) on George W. Bush's post-war investigation between 2009 and 2012 The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 as " extended interrogation techniques " approved torture methods of the CIA and their transgressions as well as a public version which appeared in 2014 and was shortened to 500 pages.

Before the 2018 election , the now 85-year-old Feinstein was exposed to dissatisfaction within her party, within which many no longer felt represented by Feinstein's mediating demeanor and moderate positions, but instead fought for more left-wing, more aggressive politics during Donald Trump's presidency . At the California Democratic Party convention in February 2018, Feinstein's speech was disrupted with “Time is up” chants and heckling, and in the - non-binding - vote on the nomination for Feinstein's previous Senate seat, she was defeated 37 to 54 percent by the previous State Senator Kevin de León who advocated a more progressive policy. In the subsequent pre-election in early June 2018, in which a large number of candidates from all parties competed against each other within California ("Jungle Primary"), Feinstein received first place among 32 candidates with 44.2 percent; de León received the second with 11.5 percent of the vote, so that both competed against each other in the main election in November. According to surveys, Feinstein was the clear favorite and Feinstein won the election with 54.16%. If she holds office until the end of the legislature (January 2025), she will be the longest serving senator in history; she is already the oldest member of the Senate.

Positions

As an advocate for embryonic stem cell research, Feinstein was one of 58 senators who wrote a letter to US President George W. Bush in the hope that restrictions on government research funding will be lifted .

Feinstein is a strong advocate of gun control laws, despite the fact that she once carried a gun herself. A permit that allows a person to conceal a weapon is difficult to obtain in California. At times Feinstein was the only person in San Francisco with such a permit.

After the revelations of Edward Snowden , which sparked the global surveillance and espionage affair in June 2013 , she defended the massive collection of telephone and Internet data as a necessary protective measure in the war on terror . Feinstein regards Snowden as a traitor. In October 2013, however, she sharply reprimanded the secret services for spying on allied heads of state and government such as Angela Merkel and demanded a “complete review of all secret service programs”.

In June 2018, she and 26 party members and two non- party members submitted a bill that would restrict the separation of illegally immigrated children from their parents , except in cases where such a separation is best for the child according to the court decision. Feinstein played an important role as a ranking member of the Judiciary Committee at the Senate hearing of Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh in September 2018 . Her delayed handling of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony , who accused Kavanaugh of attempted rape during school days, was criticized by Republicans as a partisan maneuver.

In the media

In the film of 2019 The report on the investigation of a conference committee of the Senate chaired by Senator Diane Feinstein regarding the illegal incarceration and interrogation practices of the CIA was Feinstein of Annette Bening shown.

Web links

Commons : Dianne Feinstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Dianne Feinstein  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leah Garchik: Oakland's royal wedding / Nearly 600 attend Jerry Brown's nuptials. In: SFGate . June 18, 2005, accessed May 5, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Shall Dianne Feinstein be recalled from the office of Mayor? In: OurCampaigns.com.
  3. ↑ Feinstein, Dianne. In: OurCampaigns.com.
  4. Jump up ↑ Success for Grande Dame of the Senate. In: ORF.at , December 9, 2014.
  5. ↑ Dianne Feinstein - an icon is shaken. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung , February 26, 2018.
  6. ^ California Primary Election Results. In: The New York Times , June 11, 2018; David Weigel: What challenge? Feinstein romps ahead in California primary with turns to the left. In: The Washington Post , June 3, 2018.
  7. ↑ California Senate - Feinstein vs. de Leon. In: RealClearPolitics.
  8. ^ No Retirement Talk from Dianne Feinstein, Oldest US Senator. June 18, 2017, accessed January 10, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Jeremy Herb: Feinstein stands by labeling Snowden a traitor ( Memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: The Hill , October 29, 2013.
  10. ↑ NSA surveillance: US Senate wants to investigate cell phone affair. In: Spiegel Online , October 28, 2013.
  11. ↑ Mica Rosenberg: Nearly 1,800 families separated at US-Mexico border in 17 months through February. In: Reuters , June 8, 2018.
  12. ^ Ben Sales: Dianne Feinstein's Senate career comes full circle with Kavanaugh allegations. In: Times of Israel , September 29, 2018; Molly Olmstead: Lindsey Graham Calls for an Investigation Into Dianne Feinstein's Handling of Christine Blasey Ford's Confidential Letter. In: Slate , September 30, 2018; Cortney O'Brien: Republican Senator Says They Are Investigating Feinstein. In: Townhall.com , October 1, 2018.
  13. ^ Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane: 'The Report' and the Untold Story of a Senate-CIA Conflict. In: The New York Times . November 15, 2019, accessed December 11, 2019 .
  14. ^ Benjamin Lee: The Report review - gripping, fiery drama on CIA torture investigation. In: The Guardian . January 27, 2019, accessed December 11, 2019 .
  15. ^ "The Report": Exposing the CIA Torture Methods. In: Focus . November 2, 2019, accessed December 11, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Feinstein, Dianne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Feinstein, Dianne Goldman Berman; Goldman, Dianne Emiel (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American politician
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH San Francisco , California