Marin independent journal/martin e klimek
NOVEMBER 3, 1992. Not a long time back on the calendar — but aeons ago when it comes to political careers. That was the night a diminutive former Marin County supervisor named Barbara Boxer, after five terms as Marin’s delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, remarkably became a U.S. Senator from California. Remarkable? How so? Also on that ballot asking to be sent to the U.S. Senate for a first time was San Francisco’s former mayor, Dianne Feinstein. “No way,” wrote reporter Beth Ashley in a special election-night edition of the Marin Independent Journal, “would voters elect two women, two Jewish women, two Jewish women from the same part of the state.” But, Ashley concluded, “Boxer, cool and apparently confident, won decisively, as did Feinstein.” Twenty-two years later, both still represent California in the U.S. Senate. Sen. Boxer, who no longer lives in Marin, turns 74 this month and is rumored not to be planning to seek a fifth six-year term when she faces reelection in 2016. Senator Feinstein, now 81, won’t be up for reelection until 2018. She is the oldest currently serving member of the U.S. Senate.
