Still serving at 87, Dianne Feinstein brushes off calls to resign over memory issues

The left wing of the California Democratic Party might want Sen. Dianne Feinstein to step down and make way for a younger leader, but for the time being President Joe Biden’s agenda depends on the 87-year-old lawmaker keeping her seat.

Feinstein last week filed fundraising paperwork under a committee that suggested she was thinking of running for reelection in 2024, when she would be 91.

She has not actually made that decision, but the paperwork set off a new round of calls for her to resign and allow Gov. Gavin Newsom to choose a successor.

“What has been raised about her capacity at this point raises some real concerns. There are some very serious questions that have been raised about her ability to represent the interests of Californians,” said David Campos, the chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, who supported Feinstein’s opponent in 2018, Kevin de León. “I hope she considers what’s in the best interest of the state.”

That’s complicated for Democrats, because the party would lose its majority in the Senate the moment she steps down, giving Republican Mitch McConnell a leadership position and the ability to block Biden’s priorities.

“The message to Democrats in California is ‘Let’s win some congressional seats in 2022,’” said Bob Mulholland, a longtime adviser to the California Democratic Party, when asked about calls for Feinstein to resign. “I would say to all the Democrats ... let’s focus on those (Republicans) causing trouble in our state.”

Feinstein’s detractors have pointed to a recent report in the New Yorker that implied Feinstein is having memory issues, citing anonymous sources that said she would forget about briefings and conversations shortly after they happened.

One of those instances was allegedly that then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, had to tell her a second time that she had to step down from the lead Democratic position on the Judiciary Committee, because she forgot the first time he told her.

In a more public instance in November, she asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey the same question twice within three minutes, asking Dorsey about how Twitter handled a tweet by former President Donald Trump.

“I think it would be in the best interest for her to really consult with her colleagues and staff in an honest way and determine if it’s best for her to step down,” said Jon Katz, Santa Monica Democratic Club president, who also supported de León. “I don’t think it’s my role as an outsider to say, but she really needs to evaluate in a way that removes her own ego from the picture, and figure out what’s best for the state of California.”

Katz and other progressives aren’t just concerned about her mental ability — they also don’t think her moderate stances fit the state any longer.

Feinstein drew criticism this week, for example, for remarks about Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas. The two senators led the effort to not certify President Joe Biden’s election win in the Senate, continuing to do so after a violent mob invaded the Capitol. Some senators, including new California Sen. Alex Padilla, have called for their removal.

In comments to the press on Tuesday, Feinstein took a different tack.

“I think the Senate is a place of freedom. And people come here to speak their piece, and they do, and they provide a kind of leadership,” Feinstein said. “In some cases, it’s positive, in some cases, maybe not. A lot of that depends on who is looking and what party they are. But it’s an important to have this kind of dialogue.”

Katz said those comments “cement the case” that her judgment is questionable and that she needs to consider resigning.

“To me that demonstrates that the problem is continuing and will continue so long as she remains in office,” Katz said.

When McClatchy asked about Feinstein’s response to people saying she should step down after the New Yorker story, she declined to talk.

“Oh, I’m not going to respond to that, thank you,” she said before walking onto the Senate floor in December.

Adam Russell, a spokesman for Feinstein, said in a statement to McClatchy that “she works as hard today as she ever has and continues to get bills passed,” even as the Senate’s work has slowed.

“She gets more done for California than anyone, and that will become even more true now that the Democrats have a majority in the Senate,” Russell said.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published a week after the New Yorker story, she was adamant that she hasn’t even thought about retiring.

“I don’t feel my cognitive abilities have diminished,” she told the LA Times. “No, not really. Do I forget something sometimes? Quite possibly.”

Harold Pollack, who researches the intersection of public policy and public health at the University of Chicago, said it isn’t just about questions on her mental capacity. He wrote in a Vox op-ed on the congressional aging issue published in 2017 that Feinstein should not run again in 2018.

“The actuarial table is unkind when you reach that age,” Pollack told McClatchy. “A lot of potential issues come up.”

While the New Yorker story was the first to explicitly question Feinstein’s mental capacity, questions have circulated about how she has handled political issues in recent years. Many Democrats were incensed when she didn’t immediately come forward with a letter from Christine Blasey Ford that accused Justice Kavanaugh of assault, and then were further enraged that she was polite to him during the hearings about his alleged assault.

Months after, she had a confrontation with a group of children and teenagers who came to her San Francisco office who wanted her to vote for the Green New Deal. She told them, “I know what I’m doing,” and that she won her 2018 election by more than a million votes. She was scorned on social media for the way she spoke to the children, including telling a 16-year-old girl: “You didn’t vote for me.”

More recently, she gave Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, a hug and complimented him on how the hearings to confirm Justice Barrett had gone, after Democrats had repeatedly tried to make the point that the process was illegitimate. Progressive Democrats called on her to resign her position on the Judiciary Committee, and she announced in November that she would no longer be the top Democrat on the committee in 2021.

Powerful California politicos who supported her in 2018 were not willing to talk for this story. The offices of Gov. Newsom, Vice President Kamala Harris and New York’s Schumer either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Phone calls to Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco and a huge voice in both California and San Francisco politics, were not returned.

If Feinstein were to step down, it could put Democratic priorities in jeopardy.

Biden just started his term and has begun pushing his whirlwind of legislative priorities, in addition to getting his cabinet confirmed. With only a one-seat majority in the Senate, losing even one Democrat could put Biden’s agenda in at least temporary peril.

Rob Stutzman, a longtime GOP strategist based in Sacramento, said Democrats could work around that if they chose to.

“Considering Sen. Feinstein’s age and the reporting that’s been coming out, I would think Gov. Newsom has in mind at least a short list of who he wants to put there,” Stutzman said. “It could be filled in 24 hours.”

Stutzman said it’s more likely many wouldn’t call for her ousting, even if they did have concerns, because “I don’t think that would move her. I don’t know why it would.”

Rose Kapolczynski, a Democratic strategist best known for running former California Sen. Barbara Boxer’s campaigns, said she would “challenge” anyone saying that others should have told Feinstein to step away in 2018.

“If you know Dianne Feinstein, nobody tells her what to do. She’s tough,” Kapolczynski said. “I don’t think there’s any collection of people in California who could’ve persuaded her to give up her seat if she wanted to keep it, which she obviously did.”

Campos, who is the chair of the party in the city where Feinstein was formerly mayor, said he has never witnessed anything personally that would suggest Feinstein’s mental state is declining. But he hasn’t seen her at all in person, as Feinstein hasn’t made an effort to appear at their events.

“Since I’ve been chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, I haven’t seen much, if anything of Dianne Feinstein directly,” he said. “Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi is very active, even when she can’t be there, but we haven’t heard directly from Dianne Feinstein for as long as I can remember. That’s unusual.”

Kapolczynski, who worked a couple events with Feinstein in her 2018 campaign, said she remembers a specific instance when Feinstein came to speak at a press conference with Planned Parenthood. She said Feinstein seemed completely mentally capable.

“This press conference, start to finish, was a couple of hours, meeting with Planned Parenthood leaders and activists. There was a good turnout of reporters and she engaged with other speakers and took questions,” Kapolczynski said. “She was 80-something and 80-year-olds don’t have the same spring in their step as 50-year-olds do, that’s a true fact. But she was mentally sharp and very engaged.”

Pollack, however, argued that even if someone is sharp in an advanced age, they should still step down from positions in Congress.

“When someone reaches their upper 80s, certainly it’s appropriate to say: ‘Isn’t it time for the younger folks to have a chance?’” he said.