Growing Number Of Voters Favor Senator Feinstein’s Resignation

Reports this week which found Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) health condition was actually much worse than reported led to a resurgence of California voters to signify favor for her resignation on Friday, with polls showing that even voters in Feinstein’s home city of San Francisco are polarized.

The latest push for resignation goes back to February when, shortly after announcing she would not be running again for the Senate in 2024, Feinstein returned to California to recover from shingles. While she was expected back sometime in March, this did not happen. Her absence caused problems in the Senate Judiciary Committee where a logjam of federal judge nominees began to build as she was the deciding vote given the razor thin Democratic majority in the Senate.

Last month, with Sen. Feinstein’s recovery taking longer than expected, she temporarily left the Judiciary Committee, hoping to have an interim replacement cover for her. However, Republicans rejected the plan, forcing the Committee to only approve Judges whom members from both parties could agree on. With many potential judges held back, critical Senate votes coming up that were reliant on passage with a vote from Feinstein, and concerns growing about her health, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) began to lead the charge to get her to resign. At it’s peak, dozens of Congressional members, Senators, and leftist/liberal groups pressured Feinstein to resign.

Pressure somewhat dissipated last week when Feinstein returned to Washington and resumed her job as Senator. However, this was short lived, as it was soon revealed that, in addition to having shingles, she also had encephalitis, which is brain inflammation brought on by another illness, and Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a complication of shingles that goes after facial nerves.

“While the encephalitis resolved itself shortly after she was released from the hospital in March, she continues to have complications from Ramsay Hunt syndrome,” confirmed her office.

With Feinstein also appearing confused as to what she actually had, including denying that she had encephalitis and instead had the flu, many in California began to once again challenge having Feinstein in office.

Recent polls have shown that the numbers are decidedly not in her favor. A poll last month found that 64% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans want Feinstein to resign. In fact, the majority being in favor of her resigning went across the board, with every demographic including gender, age, race, and ideology want her to resign. Her “lowest” numbers came with voters making under $50,000 a year and African Americans, with only 59% of each group favoring resignation.

And this extends to San Francisco. An impromptu poll of people inside San Francisco City Hall by the New York Times on Thursday found that support is mixed, a far cry from only a few years ago when most inside were rocks of support.

“The majority, in many cases two-thirds of voters, of every demographic want Feinstein gone,” Russell Martin, a political advisor in the Bay Area, told the Globe Friday. “And now even people in San Francisco have had enough. The sad thing is, she has had quite the legacy, and now she is really tainting it by just staying in at this point. I mean, she was a popular Supervisor, Mayor, and Senator. She did so much for the city and country. And now her legacy won’t be that, but of the Senator who just lingered in there for years because she was too selfish to pass the torch. Ideologies are very different, but this is like what happened to [Former Congressman] Strom Thurmond in the 90s and early 2000s.

“At some point you need to realize that you can’t do it any more. You can still be involved, be an advisor on the side or help corral votes from former colleagues for a bill that looks good to you. But Feinstein isn’t taking a no. And her legacy is being hurt as a result, not to mention all the damage she is doing by missing out on meetings today.”

The push for Feinstein to resign is expected to continue next week.