American politician who became Mayor of San Francisco upon the shooting of Mayor Moscone 11/27/1978, and later attained the post of US Senator.
One of three daughters of Leon (the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, a distinguished surgeon and conservative Republican) and Bessie Goldman, she was a Stanford graduate in 1955 in history and political science. Her mother was a beautiful Russian immigrant whose family had fled St. Petersburg during the Revolution and whose chronic brain ailment inflicted a tormented childhood on Dianne and her two younger sisters. Feinstein’s political fires were stirred by her Uncle Morris who took the young girl to Board of Supervisor sessions and taught her the finer points of San Francisco politics.
When she entered politics, Feinstein was appointed by Governor Pat Brown as the youngest member of the Women’s Parole Board. She then won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors twice. Just an hour before the killings of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by former Supervisor, Dan White, on the morning of 11/27/1978, Feinstein told reporters she was ready to “give up” following her term as Supervisor and go on to something else after losing two elections for Mayor, the death of her husband and an illness contracted during a trip to the Himalayas. Feinstein was the first to find Milk’s body after hearing the shots and shortly after made the announcement to the press. A week later she was elected by the other supervisors to fill out Moscone’s term. She went on to serve two terms as Mayor of San Francisco during which she developed an envied transit system, a strong police force that reduced certain categories of crime and an elaborate anti-AIDS program. Not afraid to take a stand on unpopular issues, she was able to bring warring factions together and achieved what she called “a hands-on administration.” A strong but cautious politician, she lost the election as state Governor to Pete Wilson in 1991. In November 1992, she was elected to the Senate with more votes cast for a senator in U.S. history to fill the remaining two years of then-Senator Pete Wilson’s term when he resigned to become California’s Governor. In 1994, she was elected to her first full six-year term in the Senate where she serves on three Senate Committees: the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over crime legislation and the confirmation of federal judges; the Appropriations Committee, which oversees funding of government agencies and programs; and the Rules and Administration Committee, which regulates Senate procedures and studies campaign finance reform.
She married attorney Jack Berman a year after graduation from Stanford and had a daughter, Katherine, in 1958. She has one granddaughter, Eileen. In 1961 she divorced, and married neurosurgeon Bertram Feinstein. Her second husband died of cancer in the spring of 1978, and Feinstein married third husband and fellow trekker, Richard Blum, an investment banker, in 1980.
Link to Wikipedia biography