From Political Powerhouse to Struggling Senator
Apparently, the Emi Lokan posture exists in saner climes as well.
Enter Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein, the 89-year-old Democrat from California. The first time Feinstein entered the Upper House as a senator, Ibrahim Babangida was still Nigeria’s Head of State. The 31-year political career of this Stanford-educated grandmother has made her the oldest sitting U.S. member of Congress and the longest-tenured female senator in American history. However, she is still far from the top of the list of the longest-serving U.S. Senators in history, with men unsurprisingly occupying the top ten spots. The first position belongs to Robert Byrd, who was a United States senator for over 51 years, from 1959 until his death in 2010.
Let’s get back to Dianne Feinstein. In her heyday, she was a powerhouse. President Bill Clinton once pressed her to run for governor of California. She was considered as a running mate to former Vice President Walter F. Mondale. And after the bitter 2008 Democratic primary when Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton exchanged harsh words, it was in her living room that both of them met to make peace. Even as mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988, Feinstein was a very popular mayor and was named the most effective mayor in the country in 1987. This reportedly explains why her peers supported her to become California’s first female U.S. senator in 1992. Feinstein was re-elected in 1994, 2000, 2006, 2012, and 2018. In 2012, she set the record for the most popular votes in any U.S. Senate election in history, with 7.75 million.
But those were her heydays. The fifth-wealthiest senator now sometimes struggles to recall the names of colleagues, frequently has little recollection of meetings or telephone conversations, and at times walks around in a state of befuddlement. She rarely engages with the public outside her official duties. When cornered to field questions from the press in the Senate hallways, she often responds by saying she doesn’t know enough to comment. Feinstein has not held a town hall in her constituency since 2017. At least one staff member accompanies her at essentially all times in the Capitol. One former staffer said they would have conversations about sending a letter out, and the next day Feinstein would not remember the conversation.
“It’s really hard to have a micromanager who is not fully remembering everything that we’ve talked about,” the staffer said in an article by the New York Times.
In the last few weeks, her Democratic colleagues have grown increasingly exasperated with her performance. One Democratic lawmaker who had an extended encounter with Ms. Feinstein in February said in an interview that the experience was akin to acting as a caregiver for a person in need of constant assistance. The lawmaker recalled having to reintroduce themselves to the senator multiple times, helping her locate her purse repeatedly, and answering the same set of basic small-talk questions over and over again.
On March 7, on her Twitter account, Feinstein thanked everyone who had visited her in the hospital and cared for her. She has spent nearly two months away from the Capitol, including a stint in the hospital before returning home to San Francisco to recover from an infection. Her absence has become a problem for Senate Democrats, limiting their ability to move forward with judicial nominations for President Joe Biden. This delay has caused Democratic lawmakers to publicly express concerns that Feinstein is unable to fulfill her responsibilities. Representative Ro Khanna, also from California, went on Twitter to ask Feinstein to resign and encourage other lawmakers to put the country ahead of personal loyalty by leaning her to do so. Feinstein has missed 58 Senate votes since February.
On Wednesday night, Feinstein said she would not resign. Instead, she offered a stopgap solution, saying she would request a temporary replacement on the panel. Unfortunately, replacing Feinstein on the committee would require Democrats to get support from Republicans who may refuse to provide it as they attempt to stall President Biden’s judicial nominations.
Without replacing Feinstein, the committee is tied at 10–10 and under the Senate’s current rules, a tie vote on a nomination in the committee means it fails and cannot be brought to the floor.
Feinstein is, however, resolute. She says she still plans to return to the Senate “as soon as possible,” once her doctors clear her for travel. And she makes it clear that she does not intend to resign.
“I remain committed to the job and will continue to work from home in San Francisco.”
