United States Senate election in California, 2018

Environment

From California’s snow-capped mountains to its pristine coastline, from majestic forests to the painted landscapes of its deserts, California is home to some of the most unique ecosystems in the world. Senator Feinstein has dedicated her career to preserving our natural spaces, combatting climate change, and fighting for environmental justice.

Senator Feinstein led a successful bipartisan effort to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles. Her bipartisan legislation, signed into law in 2007, the Ten-in-Ten Fuel Economy Act, raised fuel economy standards for America’s vehicles by at least 10 miles per gallon over 10 years, the largest increase in fuel efficiency in more than two decades, cutting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks in half.

A champion of preserving open space, she authored the historic California Desert Protection Act, which preserved more than seven million acres of California desert - the largest designation in the history of the continental United States. At her urging, President Obama used his authority under the Antiquities Act in 2016 to designate three new national monuments in the California desert, which protected almost 2 million additional acres.

She also helped secure over $250 million in federal funds to purchase and preserve the nearly 8,000 acre Headwaters Forest in order to save the last unprotected, intact, ancient redwood forest ecosystem on earth. She also authored successful legislation that saved nearly 300,000 acres of wilderness across Northern California, added 25,500 acres of land to the Redwood National Park in Del Norte County, and preserved over 21 miles of the Black Butte River in Mendocino County.

Senator Feinstein has also been a leader in preserving our waterways. By the 1990s, the San Francisco Bay had lost an estimated 85 percent of its historic wetlands to development, destruction, or alteration. She took action and personally negotiated the purchase of more than 16,000 acres of endangered wetlands from industrial developers along the San Francisco Bay and Napa River—the largest restoration of wetlands in California history.

And she also authored the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, which launched a nearly $2 billion public-private partnership to restore Lake Tahoe and has protected over 17,000 acres of wildlife habit and restored more than 1,700 acres of Stream Environment Zones.

Gun Reform

Dianne Feinstein became Mayor of San Francisco as the product of assassination, when San Francisco supervisor Dan White murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall in 1978. When she found Milk’s body she could smell the gunpowder. She tried to find his pulse and instead put her finger in a bullet hole. So she knows from first-hand experience about the violence that only guns can inflict on our fellow Californians.

An issue of personal importance to her, Senator Feinstein authored the landmark assault weapons ban, which banned military-style firearms from 1994 to 2004. Over that decade, the number of gun massacres fell by 37 percent and the number of people dying from gun massacres fell by 43 percent.

Now, since the assault weapons ban expired and after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 that killed 20 first graders and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, more than 400 people have been shot in more than 200 school shootings.

Tragedies in Parkland, Las Vegas, Newtown, Aurora, San Bernardino, and so many more have shocked the nation and demonstrated the need to act. Senator Feinstein has introduced a new Assault Weapons Ban to halt the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of the most commonly-owned military-style assault weapons and ban large-capacity magazines that are specifically designed to inflict maximum casualties.

She will also continue to author and support additional legislation to enact sensible gun laws, including: closing the gun-show loophole, holding arms manufacturers accountable, raising the minimum age to purchase firearms, and preventing those on the terrorist watch list from buying a gun.

Health Care

Senator Feinstein strongly supports universal health care for all Americans, and with her colleagues in the Senate, stopped Republicans attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

In 2009, when the Senate was considering the Affordable Care Act, she sponsored legislation to create a public option to compete with private health insurance, which she continues to support. She also supports lowering the age for Medicare eligibility to 55, mandating that Medicare negotiates for drug prices (which it currently does not), allowing HHS to reject unreasonable premium increases and requiring 85 percent of all premium dollars to go to patients, instead of 80 percent.

Senator Feinstein has committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose and has earned a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood for standing up for women’s reproductive health choices.

As co-chair of the Senate Cancer Coalition, Senator Feinstein has also been a leader in increasing funding for disease research. She helped stop Donald Trump's plan to cut funding from the National Institutes of Health and introduced bipartisan legislation to improve breast cancer detection.

She also sponsored the Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction Act, which led to an improved emphasis and strategy for research of top deadly cancers.

Immigration

We are a state and a nation of immigrants, and Senator Feinstein strongly opposes Donald Trump’s attacks on our immigrant communities and believes we must have comprehensive immigration reform.

She supports the DREAM Act and DACA, which is why she opposed the recent omnibus spending package that did not include protections for Dreamers. She also strongly opposes President Trump’s unjust and unconstitutional travel ban and has authored legislation to rescind the President's executive orders that created those bans.

Senator Feinstein was proud to work closely with Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers to author the Agricultural Worker Program Act to put farmworkers on a path to earned legal status and citizenship.

Senator Feinstein believes we must come together to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, backlog reduction, assistance for immigrant members of the armed services and their families, visa reform, and humanitarian relief for families.

Jobs and Economy

Senator Feinstein is committed to creating an economy that works for all Americans, not just those at the very top. She is a staunch supporter of a living wage and is a cosponsor of the RAISE the Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

She opposed Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that will add more than $1 trillion to our debt and force cuts in Medicare and Social Security. This legislation further harms Californians by eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes claimed by more than six million California households.

Instead, Senator Feinstein has championed expanding economic access for working and middle class Californians. That’s why she supported the Working Families Tax Relief Act to expand access to and the value of the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit.

She joined Senator Elizabeth Warren to coauthor legislation that would allow individuals with existing student loan debt to refinance at much lower interest rates. And she authored the Small Business Lending and Inequality Reduction Act, which would increase resources available for small businesses in traditionally underserved communities.

Senator Feinstein is also a proud cosponsor of the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which would at long last institute paid family leave, including maternity leave. She is also a cosponsor of the Healthy Families Act which would allow employees to take paid sick days.

Finally, Senator Feinstein knows that creating an economy for all also means reducing the influence of special interests in Washington. She is a staunch opponent of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which has opened the flood gates to unregulated dark money in our politics. She is a proud cosponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, which would help end secret campaign spending by strengthening disclosure and disclaimer requirements. And she also coauthored a proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn Citizens United once and for all.

LGBTQ Equality

From her two decades as a supervisor and then mayor of San Francisco, when the city was at the forefront of bringing LGBTQ people out of the shadows, to her work in Washington, Senator Dianne Feinstein has always been a champion for the LGBTQ community.

She was one of just 14 senators to vote against the original discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and she proudly authored legislation to repeal DOMA and led the filing of amicus briefs in Supreme Court cases that eventually overturned DOMA and established marriage equality nationwide.

She proudly voted to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and supports legislation that would expand the definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation, gender, and disability. She’s also cosponsored the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would ban employers from discriminating against employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And she was a strong opponent of Proposition 8 in 2008.

Today, she’s standing up against Donald Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ equality and has introduced legislation nullify his “Free Speech and Religious Liberty” executive order to prevent discrimination against LGBTQ individuals, women and religious minorities.^[9]

Leader on the Environment and Clean Energy

With his leadership and landmark legislation, Senator de León has established California’s reputation as a recognized global leader in the battle against climate change and a pioneer in creating a clean energy economy.

He played a central role in crafting a bipartisan deal this year to extend California’s cap-and-trade program with $1 billion of the generated revenue to tackle diesel pollution and bolster electrification of our transportation and vehicles.

Continuing steady progress in energy efficiency, Kevin has put California on a path to 50 percent renewable energy by 2030 – the largest state in the nation to do so – with an eye toward becoming 100 percent renewable by 2045.

California is by far the nation’s clean-energy leader and it is paying workforce dividends with the creation of well over 500,000 clean energy jobs in the Golden State – 10 times more than there are coal jobs in the entire nation.

With SB 1275 (2014), he created a rebate initiative to make electric cars more accessible to working families with the goal of placing one million low-emission vehicles on the road.

Recognizing the disproportionate suffering from pollution and climate change in disadvantaged communities, Senator de León successfully passed SB 535 (2012) which requires California to spend at least 25 percent of cap-and-trade revenue to benefit low-income communities. This law is resulting in new transit, energy efficiency, renewable energy and affordable housing projects across the state.

Also in 2012, Senator de León co-chaired the successful Proposition 39 campaign closing a corporate-tax loophole and creating a $2.5 billion revenue fund for energy-efficiency upgrades in schools.

Exemplifying his longtime commitment to increasing access to the environment, Kevin’s first legislative measure when he arrived in Sacramento allocated park funds for communities lacking parks and green space, resulting in 126 park projects across the state - the largest initiative of its kind in the nation.

Tackling pollution in his district, Senator de León was instrumental in bringing attention and accountability to the hazardous pollution caused by the Exide battery recycling plant in Vernon, which for years had operated illegally while contaminating nearby communities with lead, arsenic, and other toxins. Senator de León has since secured millions of dollars for cleanup, while implementing oversight and reform measures at the Department of Toxic Substance Control to prevent similar future occurrences.

Kevin’s record on the environment and energy has been studied by international leaders as they lay out their own steps to confront climate change and build clean-energy economies. He led the California delegation to the U.N. Climate Talks in Peru and Morocco and accompanied Governor Brown to Paris in 2015 to showcase California’s landmark accomplishments.

Transportation, Housing and Infrastructure

The road to California’s future infrastructure has long been in disrepair. This year, Senator de León led the Legislature in creating solutions that will benefit future generations of Californians.

He was instrumental in shepherding SB 1 (Beall) into law this year, making an additional $5.4 billion a year investment in road, freeway, bridge and transit projects over the next decade. The result will be lower commute times, safer roads and job creation.

Senator de León also this year successfully passed SB 5, giving Californians the opportunity to make long-overdue investments in our parks and flood-control infrastructure with a $4 billion general obligation bond measure on the June 2018 ballot.

At a time when homeownership in California is at its lowest point since the 1940’s, Senator de León led the Senate in moving legislation to fund new development, streamline approval processes, strengthen existing laws, and create more local accountability to build new housing and increase homeownership across the Golden State.

Focusing on the most vulnerable, like returning veterans and the homeless, the Senate passed landmark measures to help those with the fewest options when it comes to housing.

In 2016, Senator de León championed the “No Place Like Home” initiative, an innovative and ambitious proposal to address homelessness in California by securing $2 billion in bond financing for construction and rehabilitation of permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless Californians suffering from mental illness.

Immigrant Protection

With a firm understanding in the contributions of the undocumented community to California’s culture and economy, Kevin has led the fight against local law enforcement being commandeered to enforce federal immigration laws. This year, he passed SB 54, the California Values Act, which prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies, including school police and security departments, from using resources to investigate, interrogate, detain, detect, or arrest people for immigration enforcement purposes.

The bill also directs the state Attorney General to develop model policies to be implemented by public schools, libraries, hospitals, courthouses and other public facilities that would limit “to the fullest extent possible” assistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

With President Trump's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program, Senator de León was instrumental in negotiating $30 million to assist the nearly 250,000 Dreamers in California with legal services as well as “safety net” funding to help DACA students stay in school should they become unable to work to support their education.

In 2015, Senator de León led a bicameral coalition to sponsor legislation that addresses lapses in our justice and labor systems creating serious challenges for the California’s immigrant community, including stronger wage theft laws, securing u-visas from law enforcement, and providing healthcare for undocumented children. In 2013, he brokered a compromise with Governor Jerry Brown to ensure signage of a law which allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain drivers licenses, gain access to insurance, and step out of the shadow economy.

Before joining the Legislature, Senator de León taught citizenship courses to immigrants and led opposition to 1994’s Proposition 187, a voter-approved statewide initiative that denied government services to undocumented immigrants.

Voice for the Working Class

Senator de León was a lead negotiator with Governor Jerry Brown and the state’s unions to secure a $15 minimum wage in California, and then shepherded the legislation through both houses to the Governor’s desk.

He overcame powerful opposition from Wall Street to pass SB 1234, which created Secure Choice retirement-savings program for California’s private-sector low-income workers. Secure Choice was the first automatic IRA program of its kind in the nation and will help millions of Californians achieve retirement security when fully implemented.

Senator de León has also authored workers’ compensation reform that lowered insurance costs for businesses, while increasing workers’ benefits. He also authored legislation that strengthens the Labor Commissioner’s authority in tackling the scourge of wage theft in cities across California - especially Los Angeles which has been dubbed the “Wage Theft Capital of the U.S.”

Senator de León also negotiated the expansion of California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program, replacing the program’s lottery system with a process that quantifies job creation and economic benefits to the state’s economy.

Women's Advocate

When Planned Parenthood advocated this year for an increase in higher Medi-Cal reimbursement rates for reproductive health care, Senator de León carried their fight into budget negotiations and secured $50 million from Proposition 56 tobacco tax revenue.

Guided by a strong belief in a woman’s right to control her own health care, Senator de León has been stalwart defender for preserving federal funding for family planning as a Republican-led Congress continues to target Planned Parenthood for defunding.

Senator de León’s strong and unwavering advocacy for access and choice has been recognized by Planned Parenthood with a consistent 100 percent voting record and numerous awards, with special recognition in 2014 for legislative leadership.

Alarmed by the serious problem posed nationwide by sexual violence on college campuses, Senator de León set out to find solutions for California.

In 2014, his bill to prevent sexual assault on college campuses was first law in the nation to require affirmative consent, earning him the recognition from Marie Claire last year as one of the “ten biggest supporters of women’s right in U.S. government.” Ms. Magazine selected his “yes means yes” measure as the most significant legislative victory on behalf of women for 2014. He followed up with legislation in 2015 that requires public high schools teaching health education classes to include sexual assault prevention in their curricula.

Also in 2015, he empowered women in the workforce with state budget funding for thousands of more slots for subsidized child cares.

Public Safety and Negotiating the Budget

Throughout his decade in the legislature, Senator de León has fought for sensible gun control. In 2016, he led the charge to enact the most stringent gun control policies in a generation, including his groundbreaking SB 1235 requiring background checks for anyone who buys or sells ammunition.

In three years serving as the Senate’s lead in negotiating the budget, Senator de León has secured critical investments that strengthen the bookends of a student’s educational career, pushing for new investments in childcare and higher education. Under his leadership, California has added over 20,000 additional slots for California students in the University of California and the California State University. Both budgets during his tenure as Senate leader have been delivered on time, provided protective reserves, paid down debt, provided relief funding for the drought, and wisely invested in children and working families.^[9]