Feinstein’s toughness was forged in the chaotic 1970s

The longest-serving California senator’s announcement last week that she won’t run for re-election has prompted reflections on her groundbreaking career, through ebbs and flows of congressional power and presidencies, legislative victories and failings. But essential to everything the 89-year-old politician has done are those chaotic, formative days of her career that helped shape her identity and propel her forward.

They were anything but easy.

Feinstein persevered through the misogyny of the early 1960s to be elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1969, but she was unable to break the glass ceiling in two runs for mayor. Her second loss came in 1975. “She simply seemed too sensible, too measured for a city that fell for brawling, brash, leading men,” wrote David Talbot in his book “Season of the Witch.”

In 1976, while her husband, Bert Feinstein, was dying of cancer, the New World Liberation Front planted a bomb at her Pacific Heights home, and only a misfire avoided disaster. Underground radicals shot out the windows of her weekend home in Monterey Bay.

For a woman raised in privilege in San Francisco by a physician father, armed with a political science degree from Stanford University, it was a jolt — but perhaps emotionally less than for some. Privilege aside, her childhood was fraught with trauma from an unstable, violent mother who once chased her with a knife. Talbot’s book quotes her as saying she grew up “in a great deal of fear.”

Then came 1978.

11月27日上午,她船尾回到工作岗位er falling sick while trying to climb Mount Everest with then-fiance Richard Blum and having to be evacuated on the queen of Nepal’s helicopter. With the attacks on her homes and the mayoral losses, she was contemplating the end of her political career.

A volley of gunshots that ripped through City Hall changed all that. Former Supervisor Dan White shot Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk to death, and Feinstein — by then president of the Board of Supervisors — became acting mayor as next in line of succession. She was the first to find Milk’s body, and knelt to poke a finger through a bullet hole in his wrist. Minutes later, she held a news conference to announce the assassinations.

“We will carry on as best as we possibly can,” Feinstein said in measured, determined tones. She may as well have been describing her own career trajectory forward. She never looked back.

“In a situation like that, who can tell how someone will react — but she rose to that occasion with great aplomb. It was remarkable,” recalled former Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings, who covered Feinstein’s announcement that day.

He had written about Feinstein for several years, and in that time “she was never thought of as weak in any way,” said Jennings, who detailed the tumultuous 1970s, the City Hall shootings and their aftermath in his 2019 book, “Reporter’s Note Book.”

“She had a lot of self-confidence — she always seemed to be in command of her activities and words,” Jennings said. “It wasn’t at all surprising that she went on to the career she had after that.”

In the 1970s, women’s liberation was blowing down barriers, with people like Gloria Steinem founding Ms. Magazine and Shirley Chisolm becoming the first Black female candidate for a major party nomination for president. Feinstein was right in step, becoming the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and then first female mayor in 1978, and later first woman U.S. senator from California in 1992.

“Women were pioneering back then in various aspects of business, politics and real estate. It was rare for women to rise to higher levels,” Jennings said. “People like Dianne were the ones who set the bar for that. It was a time of cultural and political change.”

Yet, even as a trailblazer in increasingly liberal San Francisco, she took her shots from the left. Feinstein appointed LGBTQ activist Harry Britt to replace Milk, and around the same time officiated at the informal wedding of gay activist Jo Daly to partner Jill Ramsey. But her veto of Britt’s domestic partner legislation in 1982 enraged the more liberal wing of the gay community.

Her pro-business, pro-growth, pro-police policies — as well as her crackdown on gay bathhouses during the era of AIDS — also painted her more as a moderate at a time when progressive politics were gaining power.

“We had a lot of animosity toward Dianne back then — she seemed to have a morality thing going on,” said former state Assembly member and city Supervisor Tom Ammiano, who as an LGBTQ activist helped defeat the anti-gay teacher Briggs Initiative the same year Feinstein became mayor.

“The gay community is not monolithic, and those of us who were more left could be left out. I did parodies of her in my comedy,” said Ammiano, who is also a comic performer.

However, as the 1980s progressed and Feinstein helped lead the way on funding initiatives to address HIV-AIDS and homelessness, many on the left begrudgingly appreciated her efforts.

“There were two sides to the Feinstein coin,” Ammiano said. “And she was one of the few women to really break through back then.”

Former Rep. Jackie Speier of San Mateo, now a KGO-TV political analyst, remembers like few others can the urgency of what Feinstein faced.

Ten days before the City Hall assassinations, 913 people, mostly San Franciscans, had been massacred at the Jonestown compound in Guyana run by mad cult leader Jim Jones — and Speier, there on a fact-finding mission with her boss, Rep. Leo Ryan, was shot five times and left for dead. Ryan was among those who did not survive.

Speier was in a Baltimore shock-trauma unit being treated for her wounds when a doctor told her of the shootings in San Francisco. “I was thinking to myself, the world is coming to an end, certainly in the Bay Area,” she said.

As she recovered and started her own trajectory in local, state and federal elected office, Speier came to not only appreciate Feinstein’s skill in helping the city heal from the twin shocks of Jonestown and the assassinations, but to share emotional touchstones. And in that, the woman whose grit defined her most as a politician showed a soft side few know.

When Speier lost her husband, Dr. Steven Sierra, to a car wreck in 1994, Feinstein consoled her as a fellow widow. And the two shared a passion for gun control, with Feinstein successfully pushing in that same year for a national assault weapons ban in the aftermath of a mass shooting at the 101 California office building in San Francisco.

The ban expired 10 years later, but Feinstein and Speier have continued to push for gun control. They also became friends, exchanging makeup and commiserating on losses and victories through the years. Speier kept a painting of orchids Feinstein made for her in her office until she retired from Congress this year.

Makeup and paintings are not the first things that might come to mind when considering the groundbreaking politician who endured attacks and defeats to become the longest-serving senator in California’s history. But it’s all part of the person and the politician.

“Hers is a lifetime of firsts at a time when women were to be seen and not heard,” Speier said. “And steely is a good word to describe her. She has always had a steely resolve to do what was right.

“But at the same time, there is a sweetness, thoughtfulness and generosity to her.” She paused to consider the melding of the steeliness and sweetness within Feinstein, then chuckled.

“She’s always charted her own path,” Speier said.

Reach Kevin Fagan: kfagan@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @KevinChron