Former Sen. John Seymour, the last Republican to represent California in the U.S. Senate, died April 18 in Carlsbad, Calif., more than 33 years after voters replaced him with Democrat Dianne Feinstein in November 1992. He was 88 years old.
Seymour’s stint in the Senate was short: He was appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson on Jan. 7, 1991, to fill the seat Wilson vacated after winning the gubernatorial election in 1990. He made a bid to keep the seat for the last two years of the term in 1992, but lost the special election to Feinstein, a former mayor of San Francisco, and left office on Nov. 3, 1992. Feinstein went on to become the longest-serving woman in the Senate, with nearly 31 years in office before her death in 2023.
During his brief tenure, Seymour built a reputation for bipartisanship and collaboration as a moderate Republican in a party lurching rightward.
