(Daily Caller)—After Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California passed away on Friday, the Daily Caller News Foundation compiled a list of politicians who may be appointed to her seat by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, in keeping with his pledge to name a black woman to the position.

Newsom pledged to nominate a black woman to temporarily fill a potential vacancy in Feinstein’s seat in March of 2021, when health complications had raised questions about whether she would complete her term. After Newsom updated his pledge on Sept. 10, saying that he would only appoint someone who isn’t currently a candidate for the seat, the DCNF compiled a list of Democratic black women politicians from California who may be appointed based on his requirements.

1. London Breed

Breed is currently the mayor of San Francisco, a position previously held by both Feinstein and Newsom. She is also running for re-election to a second full term in 2024 but is facing primary challenges from Daniel Lurie, a philanthropist and an heir to the Levi Strauss & Co. denim jeans manufacturing fortune, as well as Democratic San Francisco Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who represents the 11th district.

Breed has been heavily criticized by Republicans and some Democrats for homelessness, sanitation drug use and crime in San Francisco. The number of encampments in the city recently reached its highest level since 2020, while the number of opioid deaths also exceeded a previous record on Sept. 19.

From the office of Senator Dianne Feinstein: pic.twitter.com/rvcAmVk8O0

— Senator Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) September 29, 2023

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson shared a statement from Breed where she said that “this decision is the Governor’s responsibility and that conversation can be saved for another day.”

2. Lori Wilson

Wilson is currently the majority whip in the California Assembly as well as the chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus, two high-ranking positions in the state’s Democratic establishment. She represents areas around the state capital of Sacramento and previously served as the mayor of Suisun City.

Wilson has recently criticized Newsom for vetoing Assembly Bill 957, a bill she had sponsored that would have threatened the custodial rights of parents who do not agree with their child’s transgenderism. “The veto … is a profound disappointment. Across this nation, transgender children are being targeted and erased,” Wilson wrote in a joint statement with the California Legislature’s LGBTQ caucus, adding “[t]his veto is a missed opportunity to remind the nation that California is a safe haven for transgender and non-binary children.”

3. Karen Bass

Bass is currently the mayor of Los Angeles, having been elected to the role in 2022. She previously served for eleven years in Congress, which included two years as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as the Speaker of the California General Assembly from 2008 to 2010 while in the state legislature.

It is unclear whether Bass, who has served less than a year as mayor, is willing to relinquish her office for a temporary appointment to Feinstein’s former seat. A spokesperson for Bass said that she is not interested in the seat, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.

“Senator Feinstein was a trailblazer on whose shoulders I, and women in elected office all across America, will always stand,” Bass wrote on Twitter regarding Feinstein’s death.

4. Pamela Price

Price is currently the district attorney of Alameda County, which is adjacent to San Francisco and includes the city of Oakland. Price is currently facing a recall effort from business groups who allege that she has failed to combat crime in the city.

“District Attorney Pamela Price has absolutely failed the people of Alameda County. Crime is spiraling out of control. It’s time to stand up for victims of crime and their families to bring justice back to Alameda County,” said Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, who has endorsed the recall effort, to CBS News. Campaigners need to gather 73,195 signatures from Alameda County voters within 160 days to initiate a recall election, CBS reported.

Price’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Feinstein’s death or whether she was seeking Feinstein’s seat.

5. Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris, like Feinstein, is from San Francisco and served alongside her in the Senate from 2017 to 2021. She also served as the district attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011 and as the attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017.

Harris, who is the ex-officio President of the Senate and is running for re-election with President Joe Biden in 2024, is highly unlikely to resign from the vice presidency to fill Feinstein’s vacancy. However, she meets Newsom’s criteria of being a black woman who is not running for the seat in 2024.

“Senator Dianne Feinstein was one of the greatest public servants that California and our nation has ever known,” Harris wrote in a statement published on Twitter. “I will never forget how I felt in November 1992 as a 28-year-old prosecutor, driving across the bridge from my home in Oakland into San Francisco to celebrate her election to the United States Senate.”

6. Mia Bonta

Bonta serves in the California Assembly as a representative for the 18th district, which covers Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also the wife of Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta of California, who was previously appointed by Newsom to his role.

Bonta, a black woman and member of the state legislature’s Black Caucus, is not currently seeking election to the Senate. If appointed, she would also become California’s first Hispanic woman senator, having been born to Puerto Rican parents who are the descendants of Ghanaian slaves.

“[Feinstein was] a Bay Area native who paved the way for a new generation of women leaders in California and nationwide. Her presence will be deeply missed in #AD18 and throughout the country,” Bonta wrote on Twitter of Feinstein’s passing.

7. Barbara Lee

Lee, the Democratic congresswoman from California’s 12 district, which covers Alameda County, is currently running for Feinstein’s seat in 2024. Were Newsom to appoint her, he would break his vow of Sept. 18 to appoint someone other than a candidate for office to the role.

“I am troubled by the governor’s remarks,” Lee said following Newsom’s announcement that he would only appoint a caretaker to the role. “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to victory election after election.”

It is not certain whether, if appointed, Lee would win the election to a full term. She currently ranks third in polls, behind Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter, respectively.

“This is a sad day for California and the nation,” Lee wrote on Twitter of Feinstein’s death. “Sen. Feinstein was a champion for our state and served as the voice of a political revolution for women.”

Newsom, Harris, Wilson, Lee, Bonta and Price did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Her cause of death was not immediately conveyed. Ms. Feinstein’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Feinstein became a U.S. senator in 1992. She was reelected five times. Before her time in Washington, she was San Francisco’s mayor and a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors. Ms. Feinstein’s latest husband, Richard Blum, died in 2022.

Ms. Feinstein had been struggling with health issues. She was briefly hospitalized in August after a fall. She was cared for in a hospital for months after contracting shingles in March. Complications from the infection included Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, which can cause facial paralysis. When she returned to the Senate, she was being pushed around in a wheelchair.

Ms. Feinstein had handed over power of attorney to her daughter as part of a battle over Mr. Blum’s estate. The seat held by Ms. Feinstein will be temporarily filled by a person chosen by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat.

Under the U.S. Constitution, states have the power to fill vacancies that arise. Ms. Feinstein’s seat was already set to become vacant in early 2025, as she had opted not to run for another term.

The race for the seat includes U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Katie Porter (D-Calif.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Republicans running include attorney Eric Early and businesswoman Sarah Sun Liew.

No Republican has represented California in the U.S. Senate since 1992. Democrats currently hold a majority in the Senate. With Feinstein, that majority was 51–49. Without her, it is 50–49. Congress is working on passing a new budget as a government shutdown looms.

History in Congress

Ms. Feinstein was praised Friday by colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

“Dianne Feinstein was a treasured friend to the Wyden family. She was an extraordinary advocate for San Francisco, for California, and for the West,” Sen. Ron Wyden (R-Ore.) said in a statement.

“Sen Feinstein did an outstanding job representing the people of California,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) added.

Ms. Feinstein helped craft a federal ban on some guns that was in place from 1994 to 2004.

She said her efforts to impose stricter regulations on gun ownership stemmed in part from the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Ms. Feinstein became the city’s mayor after Mr. Moscone was killed.

Ms. Feinstein rallied for approval of new gun control laws after the 2012 mass killing of people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.

In Washington in 2021, Ms. Feinstein described America as “a gun-happy nation, and everybody can have their gun.”

“Unfortunately we’re not making the laws that could protect people in this kind of gun crimes,” she added, referring to a mass shooting in San Jose.

Ms. Feinstein was for years the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. During her tenure, the panel reported on how the CIA ran secret detention facilities outside America and interrogated suspected terrorists in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States. The report’s summary said that the CIA’s interrogation techniques in some cases “amount[ed] to torture.” The actual report has remained classified.

“The CIA’s actions are a stain on our values and our history,” Ms. Feinstein said at the time.

The CIA said the report “provided an incomplete and selective picture of what happened.”

Ms. Feinstein sometimes frustrated liberals by adopting moderate or hawkish positions that put her at odds with the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Ms. Feinstein defended the Obama administration’s expansive collection of Americans’ phone and email records as necessary for protecting the country, for example, even as other Democratic senators voiced protests in the wake of the collection’s exposure by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

“It’s called protecting America,” Ms. Feinstein said then.

Ms. Feinstein was also criticized for how she handled confirmation hearings for former President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court picks, especially when she embraced Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) after confirmation hearings for Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Ms. Feinstein stepped down as the top Democrat on the panel shortly afterward but remained on the committee.

Ms. Feinstein was born on June 22, 1933. She graduated from Stanford University in 1955, with a bachelor’s degree in history. She married young and was a divorced single mother of her daughter, Katherine, in 1960, at a time when such a status was still unusual.

In 1961, Ms. Feinstein was appointed by then-Gov. Pat Brown to the women’s parole board, on which she served before running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Ms. Feinstein’s second husband, Bert Feinstein, was 19 years older than she, but she described the marriage as “a 10” and kept his name even after his death from cancer in 1978. In 1980, she married Mr. Blum, an investment banker. Thanks to his wealth, she was one of the richest members of the Senate.

In addition to her daughter, Ms. Feinstein leaves behind a granddaughter and three stepchildren.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.