Feinstein for Reelection

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, seeking reelection Nov. 7 to her second full term, is opposed this year by Rep. Tom Campbell of San Jose. When the nation’s most populous state has in its senator an experienced legislator who is in step with California on the major issues and who is known as a tough and effective representative, any opponent has to make an extraordinary case for change. Campbell hasn’t made that case.

An earnest Republican legislator who is at least as much libertarian as GOP in his leanings, Campbell has waged what at many points has been an unusual and even puzzling campaign. Unlike most in his party leadership, he, like Feinstein, favors abortion rights and some limits on guns. He has called attention to some of the excesses of the nation’s so-called drug war, which too often punishes sick addicts instead of providing better rehabilitation. But as his focus on that issue demonstrates, he’s off point. Yes, the drug war should be rethought, but this and other things he pushes--for instance, redirecting economic aid away from Israel and Egypt and to sub-Saharan Africa instead--are simply not central issues for most Californians.

A law school professor, Campbell, 48, brings a bit of the classroom dialectic into his politics. He has an almost admirable resistance to thinking conventionally. But such iconoclasm has its limits. What the people of California most need is a senator with a strong sense of leadership and the ability to set priorities in line with constituents and to be effective in Washington. Feinstein is such a senator.

The former San Francisco mayor, now 67, was elected in 1992 to fill the Senate seat held by newly elected Gov. Pete Wilson, then was reelected in a bruising 1994 campaign against Michael Huffington. Most notable among the Democrat’s endeavors has been her relentless pursuit of safer and saner gun laws. She has pushed for licensing and record-of-sale requirements that would apply to all purchasers of handguns and semiautomatic firearms that take detachable ammunition clips; gun owners would have to be trained in the care and use of their firearms and pass a written safety test as well as a background check. This follows her successful 1994 drive to ban various military-style weapons.

On the environment, advocacy groups don’t always find Feinstein in step, but she has been behind some bills of landmark importance to California, such as the Desert Protection Act of 1994, which sheltered about 7 million acres and established Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and the East Mojave Natural Preserve. In the last five years she has been one of a few key legislators who worked to save the redwoods of Northern California’s Headwaters grove.

Feinstein has stayed true to her reputation as a pragmatic Democrat who works well with colleagues in both parties. The Times endorses Dianne Feinstein for another term as U.S. senator.