Feinstein on Being a Woman in Politics.
CAMEROTA: Hillary Clinton was not able to break that final glass ceiling in Washington, of course, but she and long-time California Senator Dianne Feinstein are among the high-powered women blazing a trail for the next generation. CNN's chief political correspondent Dana Bash spoke with Feinstein about her five decade long career for the new CNN series "Bad-ass Women of Washington." Dana joins me now. Dana, you're very naughty naming it "Bad-ass Women." Tell us how you came up with it.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, we were talking about this and calling it bad-ass women sort of, you know, as we were developing it and we just decided, let's just call it that.</s>CAMEROTA: It stuck.</s>BASH: It stuck. And we spoke with seven women across the political and generational spectrum for this series. And we're starting with Dianne Feinstein because she has a story that will make you say, wow, she is a bad-ass.</s>BASH: Probably fair to say most women graduating from Stanford in the 1950s were focused on finding a husband and having a family. You wanted to go into politics. Did people think you were crazy?</s>FEINSTEIN: Yes. The first time out, something must be wrong with her. She must have a bad marriage. Why is she doing this?</s>BASH: People said that to you?</s>FEINSTEIN: Oh, yes. Being a woman in our society even today is difficult. You know it in the press area. I know it in the political area.</s>BASH (voice-over): Forty-seven years ago, Feinstein won a local election that eventually led her here.</s>BASH (on camera): The chair of the president of the board of supervisors in San Francisco. There are a lot of people who didn't think it was right for her to take this seat because she was a woman.</s>BASH (voice-over): She ran for mayor twice in the 1970s but lost both times. Then, tragedy put her in the job.</s>FEINSTEIN: I became mayor as a product of assassination of the mayor being killed and the first openly gay public official being killed by a friend and colleague of mine.</s>BASH: That friend was Dan White, who shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in America.</s>BASH (on camera): I've seen reports that you said that you always think, maybe I could have stopped it.</s>FEINSTEIN: I was a friend of Dan's, and I tried, to some extent, to mentor him and, oh, I never really talk about this. Dan had resigned and then wanted the seat back. And so he had an appointment with the mayor. And he walked into the office and he shot him a number of times. The door to the office opened and he came in. I heard the door slam. I heard the shots. I smelled the cordite. He whisked by. I walked down the line of supervisor's offices and found Harvey Milk. Put my finger in a bullet hole trying to get a pulse. It was the first person I'd ever seen shot to death. Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed. The suspect is Supervisor Dan White. That was the most painful lesson of division. And what I do is I really try to bring people together. Try to work out problems.</s>BASH (voice-over): Feinstein became acting mayor, then was elected in her own right and served for a total of 10 years.</s>BASH (on camera): When you were mayor and there was a fire over three alarms.</s>FEINSTEIN: I had a radio in my room, my bedroom. When a building would burn and everybody was out on the sidewalk, I went and introduced them to the Red Cross.</s>BASH (voice-over): Politics was not gender neutral, like the time a developer bet her that if he finished a project on time, she would have to wear a bathing suit in public. She took the bet and he won.</s>BASH (on camera): Oh, this is the picture.</s>FEINSTEIN: This is the bikini (ph).</s>BASH (voice-over): She not only kept that, but hundreds of other mementoes and pictures from her four decade career in a special room inside her San Francisco home.</s>FEINSTEIN: So there are a lot of stories here. This is the queen.</s>BASH (on camera): Pope John Paul.</s>FEINSTEIN: Yes.</s>BASH: Joe Montana.</s>FEINSTEIN: Yes.</s>BASH (voice-over): In 1984, she was in the running to be Walter Mondale's running mate, but he picked another woman, Geraldine Ferraro.</s>FEINSTEIN: They thought I was going to get it. This was going to be the cover.</s>BASH (on camera): Is that right?</s>FEINSTEIN: Yes. Didn't happen that way.</s>BASH: Why didn't you ever run for president?</s>FEINSTEIN: I don't know. I felt I'd never be elected. See, look how hard it is. Look at Hillary. I mean look at what she's gone through.</s>BASH: Yes. You've done hard before.</s>FEINSTEIN: Yes, I've done hard before, but it -- it's not a bad thing being in the Senate.</s>BASH (voice-over): And she's done a lot that she's proud of. High on the list is gun control.</s>FEINSTEIN: Let me tell you, I've seen assassination. I've seen killing. I know what these guns can do.</s>BASH: And she racked up a lot more firsts as a woman. First female member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and first female chair of the Intelligence Committee.</s>FEINSTEIN: Hi, everybody.</s>BASH: And I'll never forget that dramatic moment in 2014 when she defied President Obama, the leader of her own party, by going to the Senate floor and releasing a torture report Obama did not want public. It was an investigation that she oversaw and she wanted the public to see it.</s>FEINSTEIN: History will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say, never again. There was some flak, yes.</s>BASH (on camera): Well, yes. I mean one of your colleagues from California, Republican Congressman Jeff Denham (ph) said that you were as much a traitor to this country as Edward Snowden.</s>FEINSTEIN: Well, he had a bad day.</s>BASH: But you, obviously, you -- you know, you stood up and you did what you felt was right.</s>FEINSTEIN: That's what I'm there to do. It's not always easy. It's hard.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: United States Senator Dianne Feinstein.</s>BASH: People watching this, looking at you, will be shocked to know that you are the oldest serving U.S. senator.</s>FEINSTEIN: Don't rub it in.</s>BASH: I'm not. It's the opposite.</s>FEINSTEIN: It's what I'm meant to do, as long as the old bean holds up. I'm from the generation where we dropped under our desks.</s>BASH: For people who are out there saying, I want to be Dianne Feinstein. I want to do what she did.</s>FEINSTEIN: Run, but prepare yourself. And so many times talented young women go for the top first. You can't do that. Start young. Earn your spurs. You don't drop out. You take defeat after defeat after defeat. But you keep going. And I really believe that.</s>CAMEROTA: Yes, OK, she qualifies as a bad-ass woman. I didn't know a lot of that stuff and she just talked about.</s>BASH: Yes.</s>CAMEROTA: And she admitted to you that she doesn't often talk about some of those -- obviously the more painful details around Harvey Milk's death.</s>BASH: Absolutely. You know, and you could see where she had to take a breath and pace herself. And I've covered her for a long time. I don't -- she's talked about it a little bit after the Newtown massacre when she was trying to revive the assault weapons ban, but really not a lot. And, look, she is somebody -- she's going to be 84 later this month.</s>CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh.</s>BASH: And you really would never know it. And she is somebody who is a mentor to a lot of the women. There are now 21 women in the Senate. And she's a mentor to women who are in the Senate across party lines.</s>CAMEROTA: So, speaking about across party lines, you spoke to lots of women for this. You spoke to Democrats.</s>BASH: Yes.</s>CAMEROTA: You spoke to Republicans.</s>BASH: Yes.</s>CAMEROTA: You spoke to military women.</s>BASH: Yes. Exactly. Another one that we're highlighting today, our first day, is Elaine Chao, transportation secretary, who talks about the fact that she came here on a cargo ship from Taiwan at age eight. Her amazing immigrant story. A really honest conversation about a lot of things, including never having children.</s>CAMEROTA: Wow. OK. I can't wait to watch that and the entire bad-ass series. Great to have you here, Dana. You can watch the full series of "Bad-ass Women of Washington." Go to cnn.com/badasswomen. How many times can I say the word? One more because --</s>BASH: Jersey girl.</s>CAMEROTA: Jersey -- totally. CNN "NEWSROOM" with bad-ass Poppy Harlow and bad-ass woman John Berman picks up after this break.