Last September, in the dark autumn of Dianne Feinstein's discontent, her campaign for the governorship of California seemed dead in the water. She had been laid up half the summer recovering from a hysterectomy. Her San Francisco-based political consultant had ditched her, complaining that she lacked sufficient "fire in the belly" to respond to the opposition's scoffing attacks about her low profile. As she fell twelve points behind in the polls, many politicians guessed she might have to drop out of the race.
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.
They stressed the higher purpose of her "historical" candidacy: the political advancement of women all over the 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 on.' "
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. If there is such a thing as the woman's vote -- and she thinks there is -- Feinstein does not mind playing to it. "This state could use a little mothering," she tells her female audiences. "I'm dedicated to destroying the old-boy concept of government in California."