Word: feinstein
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Just as she was dejectedly weighing her waning options, Feinstein met privately with the president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority, Eleanor Smeal, and three prominent members of the organization's Los Angeles leadership. The four took Feinstein to dinner in West Hollywood, and through an evening of intense, plainspoken woman talk, they strove to shore up her resolve...
...country. The attacks against her were sexist, they said. The four implored her not to abandon hope, for she would bounce back; they were sure she would . . . Besides, Ellie Smeal recounted sympathetically, she too had undergone a hysterectomy not long before and so she understood full well why Feinstein did not then have fire in her belly -- because it was actually "burning" for all-too-real, physical reasons. At that, Feinstein had to laugh. "We left that dinner thinking 'She's really gutsy,' " Smeal recalls. " 'She's determined to carry...
Female solidarity -- "the woman thing" as one of her aides calls it -- is not incidental to Dianne Feinstein's political fortunes. A woman's vote, on the order of nearly 6 to 4, is believed to have helped propel her to victory over her rival, attorney general John Van de Kamp, in the state Democratic primary last week. It is bound to be Republican candidate Pete Wilson's most devilish problem in the fall campaign. And if Feinstein beats Wilson to win the governorship of the biggest state, she will become the most powerful elected woman politician in the country...
...voters of California sensed, as her feminist dinner companions knew, that starchy appearances can be deceiving. Feinstein does not look like someone given to discussing hysterectomies and high-stakes political battle at the dinner table. She looks like a casting director's idea of a Bryn Mawr president who must be bodily restrained from adding gloves -- or perhaps even a pillbox hat -- to her already ultra-conservative banker-blue suits and fitted red blazers and pearls. One San Francisco columnist refers to her "vulcanized hairdo," worthy of Margaret Thatcher. Other traits, however -- her stature...
...Reagan comparison applies to Feinstein's daunting skill as a speechmaker, especially on TV, which dominates electoral politics in California. Van de Kamp himself grudgingly acknowledges that "she is telegenic, speaks extremely well and conveys warmth." Feinstein learned much of her technique -- especially cadence and syncopation -- from a number of preachers in the black churches she often visits. Concludes state assembly speaker Willie Brown, who has known her for 30 years: "Dianne is as good a communicator as Ronald Reagan -- without the Chamber of Commerce jokes." To Feinstein, in fact, public performance is not a sideshow but something that cuts...