Feinstein Takes Pride in Working With GOP

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was on the phone last week, happily talking to one of Congress’ most conservative members, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Rocklin).

Just the day before, Feinstein had come under attack as a liberal at a California debate featuring three Republicans competing to become her opponent in November. No matter. Now she was planning strategy with one of her ideological opposites, a lawmaker who opposes gun control and normal trade relations with China, two issues that Feinstein supports.

Feinstein and Doolittle are working together to promote legislation to clean up Lake Tahoe. Her call to Doolittle is emblematic of how California’s senior senator--facing no major Democratic opposition in next Tuesday’s primary but looking ahead to November--plans to cast herself as a moderate who can work with Republicans as well as Democrats.

Since her election to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein has established an image for herself as “one of the best bridges in the Senate between Democrats and the majority GOP,” as Congressional Quarterly’s “Politics in America” put it.

“I’m not an ideologue,” Feinstein, 66, said in a recent interview.

She has joined with Republicans in pushing a constitutional amendment granting rights to crime victims. She worked with Utah Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, on anti-gang legislation. And she ran afoul of the American Civil Liberties Union for supporting a constitutional amendment to prohibit desecration of the flag--the only Democrat on the Judiciary Committee to do so.

Feinstein’s independent streak extended to her dealings with President Clinton. She pushed to censure the president for his conduct in the Monica S. Lewinsky affair, although she ultimately voted with Democrats to acquit the president during his impeachment trial.

Riordan Expects to Back Feinstein

While he has yet to formally endorse her, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican, said it was a safe bet he would again cross party lines to support Feinstein’s reelection. And his backing, he said, was not so much based on her positions as on her approach to politics.

“I think people make the mistake of [asking], ‘Do you agree on issues?’ ” Riordan said. “Really what you want in a president, a senator or whatever is a leader. A problem solver. The ideologues are irrelevant. In that regard, I give her a triple A plus,” Riordan said.

Jack Pitney, associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, added: “The cliche in Washington is that there are two kinds of senators: workhorses and show horses. She is a workhorse. People rely on her to do the serious business of legislation. Although her voting record isn’t that much different from Barbara Boxer’s, certainly in terms of her rhetoric and her priorities, she works more in the middle.”

Still, Feinstein, like Boxer, received a 100% rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action for her votes last year on certain social and economic issues, though in prior years she received lower ratings than Boxer. The ACLU gave Feinstein a 67% score for last year.

“What her voting record doesn’t show is how passionate she is about amending the Constitution in a way that we believe deprives people of their rights,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU national legislative office.

Feinstein also has drawn criticism from immigrants’ rights groups for her tough stands on illegal immigration.

“I don’t think of her as a voice of immigrants or the poor,” said Alice Callaghan, who founded Las Familias del Pueblo shelter in Los Angeles.

She sharply criticized Feinstein for supporting national identity cards and being a late, lukewarm opponent of Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative to deny state services to illegal immigrants.

Cecilia Munoz, vice president of policy for the National Council of La Raza in Washington, said Feinstein has a mixed record on issues of importance to the Latino community. She cited Feinstein’s opposition to a 1996 measure that would have eased the legal standard for workers who sue employers for discrimination.

On the other hand, Feinstein pushed legislation restoring benefits such as food stamps and Medicaid to needy legal immigrants who were cut off from assistance after the 1996 welfare reform. And she received a perfect score on the most recent report card of votes issued by the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda, a coalition of Latino groups.

While Feinstein decries the partisanship of the U.S. Senate, she is perhaps best known as a leading voice for gun control--an issue that divides the parties like few others.

Other than a ban on assault weapons that she sponsored, no major gun control measure has been enacted into law since the Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 elections.

She proudly exhibits in her Capitol Hill office the vote tally sheet from Senate approval last year of her long-sought ban on the importing of high-capacity ammunition magazines used in assault weapons.

But the provision--part of a juvenile crime bill that includes more controversial background checks for buyers at gun shows--has been blocked by House Republicans and some Democrats.

While she calls herself a moderate, she was singled out by the National Taxpayers Union as one of the Senate’s leading advocates of increased spending.

She pushed legislation during the first seven months of last year that would increase spending by $22 billion, according to the group, which ranked her No. 1 in promoting spending. She disputes the ranking, contending she is No. 2--behind GOP Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee.

The ranking is certain to be a campaign issue. The GOP front-runner, Rep. Tom Campbell of San Jose, has boasted about his designation by the taxpayers’ group as the “cheapest man in Congress” and recently told the state Republican convention, “I don’t spend your money and she can’t stop spending your money.”

“Certainly in the last Congress and so far in this Congress, [Campbell] has had one of the most fiscally conservative records of any member in the House,” said organization President John Berthoud. “On the other hand, Dianne Feinstein has never scored anything better than an ‘F’ and a fairly low ‘F’ at that on our scorecard. . . . So if a California voter is looking for the more fiscally conservative candidate, there doesn’t seem to be much ambiguity in this data about who that is.”

Feinstein said she is seeking to return money to California. For example, she has pushed to increase funding to California for the cost of jailing criminal illegal immigrants.

One of the spending programs on which she and Campbell differ is the $90-million annual Department of Agriculture market access program, which helps trade groups such as the California Pistachio Commission, the California Prune Board and the Wine Institute promote their products abroad.

Campbell favors eliminating the program, called “corporate welfare” by critics. But the House last year refused to do so, 355 to 72.

Feinstein supports the program, contending that it benefits California, “the largest agricultural exporter in the United States.”

Feinstein has sought to cut spending, joining Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in an unsuccessful effort to end subsidies for ethanol and sugar.

Legislatively, she has had mixed results.

Her office is decorated with symbols of achievements: Pens used by Clinton to sign the California Desert Protection Act designating 7.5 million acres of desert as wilderness. A copy of the breast cancer postage stamp she created that has raised more than $10 million for breast cancer research.

Helped Bring End to Redwood Battle

She considers among her most rewarding moments in the Senate her helping to broker an agreement to end a 10-year battle to save the redwoods of Northern California’s Headwaters grove, 3,000 acres of old-growth trees, some of them 300 feet tall and 1,000 years old.

“I spent over 400 hours of negotiation on that,” she said.

She is now pushing legislation to reform the education and health care systems--deemed top priorities of voters. One of her bills would provide $500 million annually for five years to school districts, provided they end “social promotion”--advancing students who aren’t prepared for the next grade.

On health care, she favors the measure approved by the House last year--and opposed by Campbell--that would give patients the right to independent medical review of health-plan denials and the right to sue a health plan in state court.

Feinstein has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate, but the extensive business dealings of her husband, Richard Blum, are considered a potential hurdle.

“I’m flattered,” said Feinstein, though tired of the speculation. “I don’t see it happening.”

Feinstein and her husband have an estimated net worth of $50 million, fifth highest in Congress, according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. Their real estate holdings include a Presidio Terrace home in San Francisco, a Connecticut Avenue townhouse in Washington; a vacation home in Stinson Beach; a condominium in Princeville, Kauai, and a new Aspen getaway worth a reported $7 million.

Dianne Feinstein

California’s senior senator

* Age 66

* Residence San Francisco

* Education BA, Stanford University

* Career highlights San Francisco Board of Supervisors, 1970-78; San Francisco mayor, 1978-88; Democratic nominee for governor, 1990; U.S. Senate, 1992-present.

* Interests Enjoys “doodling” pictures of birds and flowers

* Family Married to Richard C. Blum; one daughter, three stepdaughters, two grandchildren

* Quote “I’m not an ideologue.”

*

Times staff writer Nick Anderson contributed to this story.