Troy Smith
Longtime Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, who recently announced that she will not be running for re-election in 2024, has been hospitalized with a bad case of shingles.
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Her office announced that Feinstein was diagnosed with shingles in February, and was just admitted to the hospital yesterday.
This health struggle may signal mounting health problems for the 89 year old Senator who has served in the body since 1992.
Her decision to not run for re-election in 2024 paves the way for fellow California Democrat Adam Schiff, who currently serves in the House of Representatives, to take her place. Schiff announced a campaign for Senate earlier this year.
In her decision to not seek re-election, Feinstein stated…
“I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends. Even with a divided Congress, we can still pass bills that will improve lives.”
The San Fransisco Chronicle released an article in 2022 that detailed a colleague’s alarming interaction with Feinstein. Feinstein did not recognize him, though the two had met previously many times. That article reads..
When a California Democrat in Congress recently engaged in an extended conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, they prepared for a rigorous policy discussion like those they’d had with her many times over the last 15 years.
Instead, the lawmaker said, they had to reintroduce themselves to Feinstein multiple times during an interaction that lasted several hours.
Rather than delve into policy, Feinstein, 88, repeated the same small-talk questions, like asking the lawmaker what mattered to voters in their district, the member of Congress said, with no apparent recognition the two had already had a similar conversation.
The episode was so unnerving that the lawmaker — who spoke to The Chronicle on condition they not be identified because of the sensitivity of the topic — began raising concerns with colleagues to see if some kind of intervention to persuade Feinstein to retire was possible. Feinstein’s term runs through the end of 2024. The conversation occurred several weeks before the death of her husband in February.
“I have worked with her for a long time and long enough to know what she was like just a few years ago: always in command, always in charge, on top of the details, basically couldn’t resist a conversation where she was driving some bill or some idea. All of that is gone,” the lawmaker said. “She was an intellectual and political force not that long ago, and that’s why my encounter with her was so jarring. Because there was just no trace of that.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/dianne-feinstein-senate-17079487.php
Feinstein is obviously struggling. It is questionable whether or not she is capable of performing the duties of her office for the remainder of her last term.
