Trivia

She was president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when, in 1978, fellow supervisor Dan White shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and openly gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. She served as mayor of San Francisco from 1978-1988. In 1990, she beat then-state Attorney Gen. John Van de Kamp in the Democratic primary for governor and then, narrowly, lost to then-GOP Sen. Pete Wilson. In 1992, Feinstein defeated then-state Controller Gray Davis in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Wilson. That race was notorious because of Davis' running ads comparing Feinstein to tax-evading hotelier Leona Helmsley. Feinstein went on to beat Republican John Seymour, a former state senator who Wilson had appointed to his old seat upon becoming governor. In 1994, Feinstein only barely survived the GOP tide against multi-millionaire Republican Michael Huffington. In 2000, she had an easier time besting Silicon Valley moderate Rep. Tom Campbell. She became a respected member of the Senate, gaining praise for her even-handed work on the Judiciary Committee.

Ascended to the mayor's office of San Francisco after her predecessor, George Moscone, was assassinated. Feinstein, at the time the head of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, was the person who found the mayor's body. She carried a permit for a firearm when there were threats against her family in the 1980s while she was mayor; however, she later stopped carrying the permit.

Daughter, Katherine Anne, born on July 31, 1957.

Her mother Betty Rosenberg fled the Bolshevik Revolution with her czarist Russian Orthodox father. In America she became a model.

Became the first female president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in January 1978.

Democratic U.S. Senator from California (1992-2023).

Mayor of San Francisco (1978-1988)

Was considered one of the final two people for the vice presidential nomination under Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984. The nomination instead went to Congresswoman Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York.

Chair, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee (2009-2015).

When serial killer Richard Ramirez was partway through his rampage, then-San Francisco Mayor Feinstein, without consulting police, held a news conference and displayed the model of Avia shoes that Ramirez had been wearing to each of the murder sites. When Ramirez saw the news conference on television, he threw the shoes off the Golden Gate Bridge and used a different pair for future murders. Police were incensed at Feinstein for revealing a key piece of information that they intentionally had been keeping secret precisely so that Ramirez would not switch to another pair.

Graduated from the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in Pacific Heights, California.

Her mother tried to drown her youngest daughter in a bathtub.

Her grandfather fled pogroms in Russian-occupied Poland. He emigrated to San Francisco where he became a shopkeeper. His business was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He moved his family to Southern California and invested in oil wells.

California Governor Pat Brown, who was a patient of her father, named her to the California women's parole and sentencing board. She worked there for six years.

Graduated from Stanford University in 1955.

Her father Leon Goldman became the first Jewish chair of surgery at the University of California-San Francisco hospital.

Roll Call magazine, a Capitol Hill newspaper, listed her 2002 wealth at approximately $50 million.

After Democrats kept control of the U.S. Senate in the 2022 elections, she was the most senior senator of the majority party and was expected to become president pro tempore of the Senate, the second-highest-ranking official of the body after the vice president, and third in the line of presidential succession. Feinstein declined the position, and Democrats elected Patty Murray, the next most senior senator.