Buried in the Hart Senate Office Building is a windowless conference room with a potted cactus on the table. This is the 20th Century answer to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.
In place of parchment, there are photocopies of an amendment to the Constitution. In place of Madison and Hamilton, there is a law professor on the speakerphone and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a red Barrie Pace skirt and Dana Buchman jacket — one of those ensembles that, says comedian Paula Poundstone, bleeds on C-SPAN.
Feinstein is headlong into Founding Father-type work. She is framing a 430-word amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee rights to crime victims.
In this room, Feinstein, a Democrat, is hunched forward on her elbows in classic chair-of-the-board posture, haggling with co-sponsor Jon Kyl, Republican senator from Arizona, over phrasing, nuance, type of victim, range of rights. This is their 47th draft.
“Every word has a legal interpretation,” Feinstein tells a group of constituents that same day. “Every comma means something.”
On another day that week, in a high-ceilinged committee room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, so many elderly activists fill the available seats that reporters are squeezed out into the corridor. A bipartisan covey of senators — Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Alfonse D’Amato of New York — takes turns speaking out against proposals for co-payments and delayed benefits. The room does not begin to shake and rattle until the five-foot figure of Barbara Boxer, California’s other senator, stands before the cameras. Her colleagues slip out to other commitments.
“When you approach what is one of the most successful programs the United States of America has ever had, you don’t mess with it,” says the Brooklyn-born Boxer. Retired people are hooting and applauding, their emotions stoked by the Boxer charm: energy, feistiness, advocacy, the ability to make you believe she believes.
The crowd laps it up when the 56-year-old Democrat tells them: “I will be proud to carry the banner with them and with you.”
Feinstein substance vs. Boxer style.
It may not be fair that the two are distinguished in this way. It may not even be true. Barbara Boxer, after all, has pushed through Congress substantive bills on the environment and abortion. Feinstein has made headlines with her candor.
But in the five years since they became California’s first female senators, the first pair of female senators from any state and two of the most vaunted results of 1992’s “Year of the Woman,” Feinstein has increasingly become known as a woman of substance and Boxer as a woman of style.
“It is my experience that both of them do deliver and both of them fight hard. But I think the images are in fact out there,” says Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff and an ex-congressman from the 16th District of California.
“The first thing I think of when I think of Boxer is the feminist issue and getting rid of Bob Packwood,” says Dick Rosengarten, Los Angeles-based publisher of California Political Week.
“When I think of Dianne Feinstein I think of the assault-weapons ban, I think of the Desert Protection Act, I think of her role on the Foreign Relations Committee. I find a lot more substance with Feinstein than I do with Boxer.”
This is one message for Feinstein, who nurtures an image as a problem-solver.
“I happen to believe in the center of the political spectrum,” she says. On the assessment that she and Boxer embody the Democratic Party’s duality — with Feinstein as moderate and Boxer as traditional liberal — Feinstein responds: “I think that’s very good.”
Boxer, uncomfortable with the liberal label she earned during 10 years in the House of Representatives for Marin County, disagrees. “Sometimes I’m unpredictable,” she says, “and people are surprised where I come out.”
Californians seem more comfortable with the centrist. Feinstein’s approval rating tracks 5 to 10 points above Boxer’s, which floats around 40.
Feinstein unconsciously fiddles with her wedding band during an interview, pulling it off her ring finger and jamming it onto her thumb. She is friendly, if guarded.
One of the five wealthiest members of the Senate, with a minimum net worth of $14 million, Feinstein and investor husband Richard Blum paid $975,000 for a townhouse in D.C.’s Kalorama area five years ago. They decorated it with Ming vases, Asian art and Nepalese carpets, including a 400-year-old rug, a gift from the Dalai Lama. She has a Jeep Cherokee on each coast, sips Michelob Light to relax, and often springs for Chinese food for her staff. Feinstein pays to have her constituent breakfasts catered on white linen with uniformed servers in the Senate office buildings.
Boxer is relaxed, firing her energy in calculated bursts, once grabbing the end of a reporter’s microphone to make a point.
Boxer lives in a third-floor walkup on Capitol Hill, where the television is perpetually tuned to CNN or C-SPAN and the dining-room table is awash in briefing papers. She drives a Chrysler LHS and walks the Mall most mornings in a baseball cap.
Both Californians are relentless in pursuing their agendas. Boxer’s politics are undeniable: strong on environment, protecting children, defending abortion rights — an unrepentant believer in the virtues of government. Feinstein’s efforts focus on fighting crime and drugs and developing her victims-rights amendment.
Sometimes they vote together; sometimes they don’t. Feinstein supported the line-item veto, sanctions against Cuba, and a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration. Boxer voted against all three. But both voted against NAFTA and for the minimum wage.
There is speculation on whether Boxer and Feinstein get along. Both have grown weary of the question.
“Dianne and I had never been close,” Boxer wrote in her 1993 book. “We had always moved within different coalitions within the Democratic party in California. The press kept waiting for us to turn on each other — and they still are. . . . They don’t understand that even though we have very different personalities, and disagree on occasion, we share a real respect and admiration for each other that comes from what we went through together — the most grueling campaigns imaginable.”
Given that the two come from very different backgrounds, it may be little wonder that they see the world differently.
Feinstein was raised amid San Francisco affluence and private torment, the eldest daughter of a physician father who adored his children and an unstable mother who secretly abused them. Feinstein grew up in private schools, riding horses and performing on stage.
Feinstein first tasted politics when elected student-council vice president at Stanford University. When seeking a coveted political internship at the age of 21, Feinstein wrote in her application about one day running for national office. That internship helped secure an appointment to the state prisons-and-parole board in 1960. Four years later, Feinstein won the first of two terms on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She was not going to run for supervisor again when she underwent a political reincarnation in 1978, the year her beloved second husband, Bert Feinstein, died of cancer and assassinations left her at the helm of a city reeling from division and hatred. Feinstein was mayor of the city for the next 10 years.
Boxer grew up in middle-class Brooklyn, the daughter of a lawyer. She attended public schools, graduated from Brooklyn College, and married Stewart Boxer, her college sweetheart, before working to put him through law school. They came to California in 1965, where community activism propelled Boxer to the Marin County Board of Supervisors and later to Congress.
Stewart “must have felt like he married Debbie Reynolds,” Barbara wrote in her book, “and woke up with Eleanor Roosevelt!”
Her political awakening happened shortly before her first race for county supervisor, one she lost. A close friend, a neighbor, told Boxer over coffee that she shouldn’t run, that she’d be neglecting her family if she went into politics. The rejection left Boxer in tears — for the first and one of the last times.
Boxer recalls, “It was a defining moment. I said, `Never again. I’ll never shed a tear again. It doesn’t matter what another person thinks; if I think it’s right, I’m going to do it.’ “
Boxer is telling people that 1998 will be the toughest race of her life. She is at the top of a GOP Senate hit list. Three Republicans — including the mayor of San Diego, Susan Golding — are challenging her. One has already spent $2 million on negative radio ads. Boxer is headlong into building what she says must be a $20-million war chest to win.
Feinstein, by contrast, is thought to have one of the safest woman-held Senate seats. For her, the choice is not how to survive but whether and how to move forward.
She remains undecided about the governorship in 1998. And there are many who see her as a potential running mate for Al Gore in 2000. Some say Feinstein’s age — she is now 64 — wouldn’t be a plus. But one observer is not shy about advice for her in 1998.
“I think Dianne has always wanted to be governor,” Boxer says. “She’d be a really good candidate, and I’d love that. We’d be together again, on the trail.”
