Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic powerbroker who served California and her political party for 30 years, died Thursday night, a family member has told The New York Times. She was 90.
Feinstein had been in ill health recently, suffering from memory issues that prompted widespread calls, even within her own party, to step down.
According to the Times, Feinstein’s staff was informed of her death at 9 a.m. today.
Feinstein, considered by some to be a centrist Democrat and to the Right a far-left advocate, was the oldest sitting U.S. senator at the time of her death. Elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969, she became the board’s first female president in 1978, the same year San Francisco was rocked by the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall byformer supervistor Dan White.
Feinstein, who found Milk’s lifeless body, became a central figure in the fight for LGBTQ rights, as well as for environmental issues, gun control and reproductive rights.
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