Flags are at half mast in San Francisco’s city hall for a woman who was born here and died in Washington DC at the end of a remarkable life. It was inside that building that the most dramatic and pivotal event of Dianne Feinstein’s political career took place, when a murderer made her mayor, the mayor who would become one of the country’s strongest leaders in response to the Aids crisis. That role gave her the visibility to run for the Senate in 1992, and she held onto that seat to her dying day, showing up on Thursday to cast a vote in the budget battle, hours before her death at 90.
Senator Feinstein began her political career being ahead of her society and ended it by being behind it. This is not surprising for a public life in politics that stretched through 60 years of dramatic social and political change. But it may be hard to perceive for those who don’t know she was early on a champion for women’s rights – including her own just to participate, at a time when that was groundbreaking – and for rights and recognition for queer people at a time when most politicians would only mention them to demand punishment and ostracization for them.
