View the full episode transcript.
On Thursday night, Sen. Dianne Feinstein passed away at age 90. Before becoming a U.S. Senator in 1992, she was best known for her time as San Francisco mayor. Today, we revisit an episode with KQED’s Scott Shafer about how she got her start in local politics.
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Episode Transcript
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to the Bay. Local news to Keep You Rooted. Condolences and tributes have been pouring in for Senator Dianne Feinstein, who died in her Washington, D.C., home at the age of 90. Feinstein served in the U.S. Senate for more than 30 years while she was in office. She was a champion of gun control and a trailblazer for women in politics. But by the end of her life, she was a controversial figure. Some Democrats who hoped she would step aside for a new generation grew angry and frustrated with her for continuing to stay in office, even as her health declined. At one point, though, Feinstein was the next generation, a woman of many firsts who was breaking glass ceilings for those behind her in local, state and national politics.
Dianne Feinstein: I look to building San Francisco’s future through leadership, honesty and creativity. So let’s end once and for all the nonsense that a woman is not capable of providing the strength and toughness necessary.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra: Today, we’re revisiting a conversation from back in March. Our senior editor, Alan Monticello, talks with KQED’s Scott Shafer about Dianne Feinstein’s San Francisco roots and the legacy she leaves behind in the Bay Area. Stay with us.
Alan Montecillo: Hi. This is Alan Montecillo, senior editor of The Bay. We’ve been planning this episode about DianneFeinstein for some time now. But a few days ago, we got some breaking news about her. On Thursday, Senator Feinstein announced that she’s been admitted to a hospital in the Bay Area to receive treatment for shingles. In a statement, she said she was diagnosed last month and that she expects to make a full recovery and return to Washington later on in March. For more updates on this and other breaking news stories, check out KQED.org or tune in to 88.5 FM. All right. Here’s the show.
Alan Montecillo: I’m Alan Montecillo in for Ericka Cruz Guevarra, and welcome to The Bay. Local news to keep you rooted. By now, you probably know that Senator Dianne Feinstein is retiring at the end of her term next year after representing California in the U.S. Senate since 1992. But before she was in Washington, Feinstein was known best for her time in San Francisco in the seventies and eighties. She led the city through some difficult and turbulent times. She also became well known across the country for being one of just a few women in elected office.
Dianne Feinstein: I look to building San Francisco’s future through leadership, honesty and creativity. So, let’s end once and for all the nonsense that a woman is not capable of providing the strength and toughness necessary to do this.
Alan Montecillo: Today: when Dianne Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco.
Scott Shafer: Dianne Feinstein was born Diane Goldman in 1933 in San Francisco.
Alan Montecillo: Scott Shafer is senior editor of KQED’s California Politics and Government Desk.
Scott Shafer: Her father was a well-known surgeon. Her mother was an immigrant from Russia, a former model. Her parents were both Jewish, but she went to Sacred Heart, which is a Catholic school, very disciplined, you know, very academic. She did not have a happy childhood. She had two younger sisters. Her mother was known to drink a lot. She would fly off into a rage for no particular reason.She learned to be an adult as a young kid because she had to take care of her younger sisters. And I think you can see some of that behavior in her as a political figure, somebody who was sort of in charge. She went to Stanford. She focused on political science. She got involved in student government. Found out she was pretty good at it and liked it. And obviously, that’s what she pursued in 1969.
Alan Montecillo: She decides to run for the board of supervisors. I believe this is her first run for office. What are her big issues when she decides to run citywide?
Scott Shafer: She’s always been focused on sort of the nuts and bolts of government. And that was certainly what she was looking at when she was running that first time. She was closely aligned with business groups. She cared a lot about the economy of the city, the level of taxation, services like Muni. It raised a lot of money. She was on television, the very first candidate running for the Board of supervisors in San Francisco that ever actually advertised on TV.
Interviewer: What do you think that the new people can do that the old ones haven’t?
Dianne Feinstein: Well, I don’t think the board has really done their homework when it comes to taxation. There are other kinds of taxes which are fair.
Scott Shafer: You know, seeing her in those early, early clips, you know, in 1969, I always think of her as a serious-minded politician, somebody who really had her nose to the grindstone and was looking at the budget and reading bills and legislation.
Dianne Feinstein: I think we can come up with law enforcement programs that really can afford a greater degree of public protection. And I, for one, intend to speak out very loudly about this pollution of our Bay with our sewage. As you know, when it rains, all of our raw sewage is dumped into the Bay.
Scott Shafer: She very much appealed to sort of the center of San Francisco politics. And she came in first place, which — and then she became the [San Francisco] Board of Supervisors president –the first woman to do that.
Alan Montecillo: This was also a time, as you mentioned, where there were just way, way way fewer women in elected office. You mentioned she was the only woman who ran in that supervisor’s race in 1969. How much did that come up when she was campaigning and how did she talk about it at that time?
Scott Shafer: I don’t think she made a big deal of it.
News anchor: Dianne Feinstein is the kind of woman many ladies could dislike if she wasn’t so appealing. She does everything well. She is bright, poised, attractive and capable.
Scott Shafer: I don’t think she wanted to draw attention to the fact that she was a woman. If she was asked about it — and she was, you know, later, after she got elected — she would say things like, well, you know, as long as a woman can maintain her femininity and be proper, I think that she can still be a good politician. Just very not wanting to color too far outside the lines.
News anchor: Mrs. Feinstein, how do you feel about being a woman involved in politics? Do you think that that’s an asset or a liability, or do you think it’s a factor perhaps in your victory orin your effectiveness?
Dianne Feinstein: Well, I think it’s an asset, actually. I think if a woman is able to retain her femininity, if she’s able to use it with taste and wisely, if she also has a good brain and commonsense and uses these ingredients as well, I think she can be enormously effective.
Scott Shafer: And that was something that later in her career, even though she was breaking these glass ceilings, I think a lot of women felt that she didn’t lean into the feminist movement enough.
Alan Montecillo: Feinstein gets elected to the board in1969, eventually becomes the board president. She does run for mayor in ’71 and ’75 and loses both times. In 1978, she does become the mayor, but kind of through one of the darkest moments in San Francisco history. I’m talking, of course, about the assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Mosconi. Remind me, walk me through the lead-up to that day. What was going on in San Francisco?
Scott Shafer: Wow. I mean, 1978 as a year was a traumatic year for Dianne Feinstein, personally and professionally. Her husband, Bert, who was the love of her life, by all accounts, died. We had the horrible spectacle of hundreds of people dying in Jonestown.
News anchor: I also have to warn you, as we begin this special report, that what you’re about to see almost defies description. And some of you may not want to watch it.
Scott Shafer: … which was a compound down in Guyana in South America. It was led by Jim Jones, who was a preacher in San Francisco, very politically connected.
News anchor: As soon as these pictures from Jonestown cleared our newsroom, everybody, even a lot of hardened news people reacted in horror and disbelief. The word on everybody’s lips was shades of Auschwitz.
Scott Shafer: And so the city was reeling. And then just like ten days or so later, shots rang out in city hall. The mayor, George Mosconi, who was a beloved progressive, [was] shot and killed by Dan White, who was a member of the Board of Supervisors. He then walked down the hall, shot and killed Harvey Milk, the first openly gay member of the Board of [Supervisors], and Feinstein found his body.
Alan Montecillo: There’s, of course, this very well known clip of Acting Mayor Feinstein having to essentially break this news to the public. What do you remember from that footage?
Scott Shafer: Every time I see that footage, it sends a chill up and down my spine. And I’ve seen it many times.
News anchor: Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed.
Crowd: [HORRIFIED GASPS FROM CROWD]
Scott Shafer: Her self-control, her looking straight out into the middle distance and breaking the news. I mean, nowadays we all find out about news instantaneously on our phones. But the idea that you could have, you know, an assassinated mayor and an assassinated supervisor in the building and no one knew. So, she delivered the news to a press corps and others who were assembled outside the mayor’s office. And so, what really stands out was just her shock, you know, her grief, but also holding it together and being strong in a moment when the wheels were falling off the city.
Alan Montecillo: Does Feinstein ever kind of open up later in life about what that day was like for her?
Scott Shafer: She does. She talked with me and Marisa Lagos on Political Breakdown about it.
Dianne Feinstein: It’s still very traumatic for me to look back on candidly. And I would give up anything if they had not happened.
Scott Shafer: Ironically, hours before the assassinations, Dianne Feinstein had mentioned to people that she was thinking of getting out of politics.
Dianne Feinstein: I had run for mayor, and I was defeated. And I was convinced I would never be mayor. My husband had died. I had a daughter. And I just thought enough was enough.
Scott Shafer: And Dianne Feinstein herself had been the subject of attempted violence. In 1976, there was a radical anti-capitalist group that planted a bomb outside her house in Pacific Heights. It didn’t go off. She wasn’t hurt. They also shot out her windows in a beach house that she had in Marin. So, she was, you know, no stranger to violence. But I think the level of violence was just too much for so many people in San Francisco to bear. But she held it together.
Alan Montecillo: So, Dianne Feinstein becomes the mayor in 1978 in the wake of this horrific tragedy. You’ve already mentioned that this was an extremely chaotic time in San Francisco. I mean, what does she inherit as she steps right into the job?
Scott Shafer: Well, the first thing she has to do is to begin to heal the city, bring the city back together after the assassinations, after Jonestown. And she really focused on the nuts and bolts of city government. One of her big campaigns as mayor early on was to save the cable cars. They needed a lot of repair. They were old. And she said, no, we can’t shut these down. These are an iconic symbol of San Francisco. And she led, you know, a group of businesspeople to raise the money to renovate the cable cars. The other thing I should point out, in terms of taking over as mayor, 1978 was a big year in politics in that voters in November of that year had passed Proposition 13, which was the so-called property tax revolt.
Scott Shafer: And so the finances of cities and counties and state government were sort of thrown up into upheaval. And so mayors, including Feinstein, had to deal with this sort of huge disruption in revenue sources. And that was the kind of thing she focused on. It was those, you know — really meat and potatoes, you know, make sure the potholes are filled, make sure the police department has enough staffing and that sort of thing, make sure the buses are running on time. And it was in that environment that we saw the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, which was landed right on her desk.
News anchor: This depression of the immune system can lead to a rare form of cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma, which shows up as those purple spots. This cancer has a death rate of 80% two years after diagnosis. This is not a benign disease.
Alan Montecillo: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Tell me more about Dianne Feinstein’s response to the AIDS crisis in San Francisco.
Scott Shafer: Dianne Feinstein really stepped up during the AIDS epidemic. I mean, it didn’t even have a name at that point. They called it GRID: Gay Related Immune Deficiency. At that point, there were a couple, just a very small number of these mysterious illnesses that had broken out among gay men. It was very troubling. And it, you know, quickly became clear that this was spreading rather fast. And at that time, Ronald Reagan was president. We had a Republican governor, George Deukmejian. And especially the Reagan administration did literally nothing helpful.
Scott Shafer: And so it fell to San Francisco and Mayor Feinstein. And from the very beginning, as early as 1981–82, she put money in the city budget to investigate what was happening and put together the infrastructure of what became known as the San Francisco Model.
Paul Volberding: San Francisco got a lot of credit for the San Francisco model of response to the AIDS epidemic. And really, a lot of that can be traced back to Dianne Feinstein’s leadership.
Scott Shafer: People like Paul Volberding, who was a young AIDS doc at San Francisco General Hospital, would go to her and brief her on what was happening.
Paul Volberding: We were learning a lot very quickly and she wanted to, and I think she wanted to have policies that reflected the best knowledge at the time. In contrast to some places in the country, she really let that science lead her to her approach to this.
Scott Shafer: She came from a medical background. She had been married to a doctor. Her father was a doctor. She was very interested in data. But when others, like Mayor Koch in New York, were doing nothing or not enough, she really, really embraced it and took the lead on putting together the system that got the city through a very, very dark time.
Paul Volberding: When we needed money to, you know, hire more doctors to develop more space at San Francisco General Hospital to bring people together, to look at research questions in the community, that support for that seemed to me to be always easy.
Scott Shafer: The one big thing that she did that was very controversial is San Francisco had gay bathhouses, and even thought he virus hadn’t been discovered yet, it wasn’t clear what was causing AIDS, there was a sense among public health people that whatever it was was being spread by sexual contact among men, and she wanted to close down the bathhouses, and it became a big mess. Ultimately, she got her way. The bathhouses shut down, which I think many would say was the right thing to do.
Alan Montecillo: What was her relationship with the gay community like when she was mayor?
Scott Shafer: Well, you have to, I think, look at it in the context of her time. You know, in the late seventies, there weren’t a lot of openly gay elected officials. You know, Harvey Milk had been shot and killed. It was somewhat risky in many places to even align yourself politically with the gay community. She did that, you know, and so she won support in her early campaigns for supervisor and later, you know, for mayor. However, she wasn’t beloved universally.
News anchor: Feinstein is often criticized by gays for not feeling comfortable with the whole subject of homosexuality. Gays attack her for what they consider her inability to control alleged police harassment of gays.
Scott Shafer: She vetoed a piece of legislation that would have created domestic partnerships in San Francisco for same-sex couples. She never rode in the gay Pride parades to this day because I think she’s just so proper.
News anchor: Here, she proclaims Lesbian Gay Freedom Week and boosts the gay parade in which she has never personally participated.
Dianne Feinstein: [Unintelligible]
Scott Shafer: There was a well-known, civic, gay activist who said once about Dianne Feinstein, she doesn’t care what we do in bed as long as we’re in bed by 11 o’clock. So, I would say it was very mixed. And also, the gay community tends to be a lot more liberal on issues. She was for the death penalty. She was very pro-business. But at the same time, I think looking back, she gets, you know, total credit for how she handled the AIDS epidemic.
Alan Montecillo: In the end, was she a popular mayor?
Scott Shafer: Absolutely. I mean, I would say there were people who really disliked Dianne Feinstein. I think there were people who felt she was too conservative, that she was kind of a prude. You know, in a city that is known for kind of outrageousness. But I think her time as mayor has aged well.
Alan Montecillo: How and when does she eventually kind of make the leap from the local to the national stage? We know her now as a senator, but how does that leap happen?
Scott Shafer: Well, in some ways, 1984. San Francisco hosted the Democratic National Convention, where Walter Mondale nominates Geraldine Ferraro to be the first woman on a major party ticket. And just before the convention, Dianne Feinstein and Geraldine Ferraro are on the cover of Time magazine. Their photos, or pictures of them are there with the title “Why Not a Woman for Vice President?” So, by then, she was already developing a national profile. Everything changes in 1991, when Clarence Thomas is nominated by President Bush to be on the U.S. Supreme Court and there are allegations of sexual harassment and worse from Anita Hill.
Anita Hill: He talked about pornographic materials depicting individuals with large penises or large breasts involved in various sex acts.
Scott Shafer: The Judiciary Committee, which held hearings into the confirmation of Thomas and which also talked with and interviewed Anita Hill, was all white males, mostly older, including Joe Biden, who was the chair. And they treated Anita Hill disrespectfully.
Joe Biden: It is appropriate to ask Professor Hill anything any member wishes to ask her to plumb the depths of her credibility.
Alan Simpson: Why in God’s name would you ever speak to a man like that the rest of your life?
Howell Heflin: I’ve got to determine what your motivation might be. Are you a scorned woman? Are you interested in writing abook?
Scott Shafer: Clarence Thomas barely got confirmed. I think he got 51 [or 52] votes. And Feinstein and many others saw that as an indication that we needed to get more women into government in Washington.
Dianne Feinstein: Tonight, history is being made.
Scott Shafer: Dianne Feinstein, this Jewish woman from San Francisco becomes senator along with Barbara Boxer, who had been in the House of Representatives from Marin.
Dianne Feinstein: We will be the Cagney Lacey one-two punch for the state of California.
Scott Shafer: And so, 1992 was really the year that she and others broke through in the so-called “Year of the Woman.” The number of women in the Senate went from two to six.
Alan Montecillo: Tripling.
Scott Shafer: Yeah, tripled. Yes, exactly. It’s much higher now, thankfully. But nonetheless, that was really her big splash, I think, on the national scene.
Dianne Feinstein: So, Washington, ready or not, here we come.
Alan Montecillo: We’re talking about this because, of course, Senator Feinstein is retiring. This marks more than 50 years of public service. A lot of the conversation now, understandably, is about her time as a U.S. senator. But when you look back at her time in San Francisco in the ’70s and ’80s, what stands out to you the most? And what do you want to make sure people don’t forget as they think about her long career?
Scott Shafer: Dianne Feinstein broke glass ceilings. She was a pioneer. She went places that no other woman had. She opened the door to a lot of other women running for office. She was somebody who steadied the ship at a time when the city was in crisis. She guided the city through a terrible, almost unimaginable — today —AIDS epidemic. HIV AIDS was a death sentence for everyone who got it at that time. And she got the city through that. She managed to hold the city together. And someone who was, you know, very competent, not always beloved, not always in line with the liberal values of the city, but someone who tried to do the right thing and broke a lot of glass ceilings along the way.
Alan Montecillo: Scott, thanks so much.
Scott Shafer: You’re welcome.
Alan Montecillo: That was Scott Shafer, senior editor of KQED’s California Politics and Government Desk. This conversation was cut and edited by producer Maria Esquinca. I added the music and the tape. The audio you heard in this episode was courtesy of San Francisco State’s Bay Area TV Archive, KQED archives and C-SPAN. If you haven’t yet, please consider filling out our listener survey. It takes just eight minutes and it’s a great chance to tell us directly what you like about the show and what you want to hear more of. The Bay is a production of KQED in San Francisco. I’m Alan Montecillo in for Ericka Cruz Guevarra. Talk to you next time.