Former Gov. Gray Davis Remembers His Friend, Dianne Feinstein

Former California Gov. Gray Davis knew Dianne Feinstein almost as long as he's been in politics. From competitors vying for a US Senate seat, to colleagues working to make Californians lives better, Davis remembers their decades of time together fondly.

His conversation with LAist 89.3's Nick Roman has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What Feinstein was like

LAist: Can you talk to us about what it was like working with Dianne Feinstein when you were governor?

Gray Davis: She was a force of nature. She could be charming. She always did her homework, but she could be tough. When she was on your side, you were in really good shape, and when she was against you, you were in bad shape. She was very persuasive. I mean, as a freshman senator in office two years, she was able to get an assault weapon ban. And for 10 years, assault weapons were banned in America.

Assault weapons ban

LAist: She was barely in the Senate and she got that done. How?

Gray Davis: She'd barely been in two years. A freshman senator back in the early 1990s, when she and Barbara Boxer won, they doubled the number of women from two to four. The Judiciary Committee was all male, and she promised then-Senator Joe Biden that she was going to get an assault weapon ban. Now, no one had ever done that before her. No one ever did it after her. But somehow, through a combination of good homework, good advocacy, charm, and toughness got us a 10-year ban on assault weapons, which is extraordinarily important.

Why is that important? Gabby Giffords, she was almost assassinated in Arizona. The only way they stopped the shooter is he had to stop to reload. So that was a remarkable achievement. Nobody thought she could do it, and nobody has done it since.

Her early career

LAist: I want to take you back to that time. There were the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. There had been another giant upset in San Francisco just days earlier, which was the mass suicide at the People's Temple in Guyana. So many San Franciscans were involved in that. That time was just chaos, how did she bring calm to the city?

Gray Davis: She reminds me a little bit of my mother. Roughly the same age, and they've lived through the depression, they've lived through World War II. They had to be tough to survive, and they worked. But they were also gracious, and polite and had all the skill sets to be successful.

She worked on our assault weapon ban when I became governor in 1999. We had to close some of the loopholes at the federal level, so we made those changes and others. When she was on your side, you were going to win. And when she was not on your side, you were not going to win.

The year of the woman

LAist: You ran against her in the special election for US Senate, and I imagine you got a view of what a tough opponent she was right then.

Gray Davis: Yes, that's Exhibit A in my statement. When she's not on your side, you're not going to win. But I learned my lesson, I apologized. We worked together on a lot of issues: water policy, assault weapons, and a number of environmental issues. And I was pleased to appoint her daughter, Katherine Feinstein, to the judiciary in San Francisco. She became the presiding judge there, an excellent judge.

We worked on a lot of positive things, but the point I want to make is she was exactly what she represented herself to be kind of a moderate trying to work with both sides to do positive things for America. She wanted to work with Democrats, she wanted to work with Independents, she wanted to work with Republicans, but most of all, she wanted to do something positive for the people she represented.

3 decades in the U.S. Senate

LAist: We've had many giants from California in the US Senate. Where would you place her in that group?

Gray Davis: I can't think of anyone who was a US Senator, Republican or Democrat, that had a more significant impact than Dianne Feinstein. So I would say she's at the top of the list, or tied to the top of the list, and she had to start from the very bottom. She was one of four women in a 100-person US Senate, so that complicated matters even more.

LAist: When you were governor, how frequent were your conversations with Senator Feinstein?

Gray Davis: Well, we always talked when there were issues that affected California. That could be once a month, that could be three times a week. It kind of depended. I remember we worked very closely to protect Lake Tahoe. That was an issue that we worked on almost every year, while I was governor and she was senator, but it made a huge difference. They just had a big ceremony a few months ago indicating all the good work she and Nevada Sen. Harry Reid did together to make that a better place to visit, a better place to live in. She was the senior senator and just a remarkable person, which Republicans, Democrats and Independents will readily agree. She was the kind of politician who was willing to work with the other side.

Her legacy

LAist: We've lost a lot of that. Can we get back to any of that?

Gray Davis: I certainly hope so. I remember the day when people were proud to say, I'm going to vote for the best person. Whatever party they are, if I like that person, I believe in that person, I'm gonna vote. I still believe that's the way politics should be conducted.

My mother said to me one time, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. You should listen more than you talk. When you listen, it's amazing how much you can learn. Feinstein had all those skill sets, and we're gonna miss her.

But I have one other story.

LAist: I would love to hear it.

Gray Davis: I had just returned to Gov. Jerry Brown’s office as chief of staff and I had just bought a condominium in Sacramento. I’d only been there three days, I didn’t even know what my home number was. The phone starts to ring at about 2:30 in the morning. I'm thinking maybe it's a wrong number, but it rang and rang and rang so I finally got up. It was the Governor's Office of Emergency Services, and Dianne Feinstein was on the line.

There were a lot of Molotov cocktails and a big demonstration in front of City Hall because Dan White, who killed Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, only got a four-year sentence. People were protesting that sentence was way too lenient. You could hear the Molotov cocktails, you could hear the noise, you could hear sirens in the background when she was talking to me.

She wanted to know if we could send in some additional Highway Patrol officers because all the sheriff's deputies were involved in protecting City Hall and kind of restraining the mob that was assembling. She needed help, and I was authorized to provide it within an hour, and she never forgot it.

Many, many times in the years afterwards when Dianne Feinstein was speaking to an audience and I was in the crowd, she would tell that story about how we'd work together to restore order in San Francisco. We had a good relationship. It started out kind of rocky, but it ended as solid as a rock.