Dianne Feinstein woke up on the morning of Nov. 27, 1978, a relative unknown. The president of San Francisco’s board of supervisors, the then-45-year-old was a prominent local figure, but far from the positions of power and influence she would later hold for decades.
Then shots rang out in San Francisco’s City Hall, a burst of violence that left Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk dead.
“It was one of the hardest moments, if not the hardest moment, of my life,” Feinstein, who died Thursday night at age 90, told SFGate in a 2008 interview marking the 30th anniversary of the murders by former Supervisor Dan White.
On that fateful day, Feinstein had returned to work following a three-week absence. While she was away, White had submitted his resignation from the board, citing the low salary that he said required him to work a second job and prevented him from properly serving his constituents.
However, White later changed his mind, writing to Moscone that he wanted to remain on the board. His request was denied and the mayor indicated he would not re-appoint White.
Moscone had planned to announce Nov. 27 that White’s former role would be filled by someone else, but he never got the chance. White went to City Hall armed with two guns, confronting Moscone before shooting him dead.
At the same time, Feinstein was trying to track down White and explain Moscone’s decision, not knowing what had just happened.
“I saw him come in. I said, ‘Dan, can I talk to you?’” she recalled in 2008. “And he went by, and I heard the door close, and I heard the shots and smelled the cordite, and I came out of my office.”
White had just killed Milk, the first openly gay man to hold public office in the Golden State, in the Supervisors’ shared office space before fleeing.
“I found Harvey on his stomach,” Feinstein said. “I tried to get a pulse and put my finger through a bullet hole. He was clearly dead.”
“It was a devastating moment,” she added. “For San Francisco, it was a day of infamy.”
At a press conference that had been called to announce White’s replacement, Feinstein instead announced that Milk and Moscone had been murdered, and named White, who she once considered a friend and mentee, as the suspect.
“I still believe that if I could have been there for that three weeks, I could have stopped it,” she said. “Now, who knows? Who knows?”
Following Moscone’s death, Feinstein was named acting mayor of San Francisco. She was then twice elected mayor in her own right, a position she held for a decade during which she charted a center-left course for the City by the Bay.
After a failed gubernatorial run in 1990, Feinstein was elected California’s first female US senator in 1992, a post she held until her death.
But she never forgot that day in 1978, telling SFGate the killings had “helped form who I am and what I believe.”
“If I could have undone the moment, even today, I would have undone it in a second,” she said. “In a nanosecond.”
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