Feinstein, back in the Senate, relies heavily on staff to function

When Senator Dianne Feinstein entered a hearing room this month to reclaim her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee after a months-long absence, she was accompanied by a phalanx of aides.

Two staffers placed the 89-year-old California Democrat in a chair onstage as the assembled senators greeted their ailing colleague with a round of applause. When Ms. Feinstein spoke — during a vote for one of President Biden’s many judicial candidates whose endorsement had been awaiting her return — she appeared to be reading from a piece of paper handed to her by a female aide sitting behind her.

“I request to be registered as voting in person on the three nominees previously considered, Mr. Chairman, and I am now voting yes,” she said.

The aide knelt beside her and whispered in her ear between ballots—she repeatedly emerged from her seat to confer with the senator, at one point clearing away the paper Ms. Feinstein had read and presented her with a folder containing seemed to contain background information on the nominees.

The scene was typical of Ms. Feinstein’s everyday life on Capitol Hill, where she is surrounded by a retinue of staffers who not only fill the roles of typical congressional clerks — advising on policy, keeping track of the schedule, drafting statements and speeches — as well as being de facto companions of a senator whose age, frail health and memory problems make it difficult for her to function alone.

Their role has come under more scrutiny as some Democrats and many of Mrs. Feinstein’s voters become increasingly concerned about her refusal to step down from a position she cannot fill without a heavy and constant reliance on her aides.

They push her wheelchair along, remind her how and when to vote, and step in to explain what happens if she gets confused. They stay with her in the cloakroom just off the Senate floor, where Ms. Feinstein tends to wait her turn to vote, then appears in the doorway to register her “yes” or “no” from the outside edge of the room.

All senators rely heavily on staff. But Ms. Feinstein’s memory problems have left her needing much more support than other senators for years. Updating her on the day’s news requires longer sessions and more background information.

At times, she has expressed confusion over the basics of how the Senate functions. When Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the chamber last year in one of several cases where she was called upon to cast a tie-breaker vote, Ms. Feinstein expressed confusion, according to a person who witnessed the scene and asked her colleagues : “What is she doing here? Employees have been overheard explaining to her that she cannot leave yet because more votes are coming.

Since returning to work on a limited schedule while recovering from shingles and multiple serious complications, Ms. Feinstein’s staff has ensured she is never alone and heavily protected. The Capitol Police and Senate Police have gone to great lengths to protect Ms. Feinstein from photographers and reporters, That reports the Los Angeles Timescreating a bubble around her as aides intervened on her behalf.

Reporters have sometimes been asked to maintain a respectful distance from the senator as staff tried to hide her from photographers.

It’s a daunting task for Mrs. Feinstein’s assistants, many of whom go back decades with her. They grapple with how to balance their work as public officials with their responsibilities to a vastly diminished legislature who remains in charge of representing California’s 40 million residents, sometimes making public statements that are untrue.

After The New York Times revealed this month that Ms. Feinstein had encephalitis caused by shingles, a condition not disclosed by her office, she denied the story and told a CNN reporter who managed to approach her at the U.S. Capitol that she had only had a “bad flu”. Her spokesman, Adam Russell, later released a statement correcting her and confirming that the senator had encephalitis, which he said had “resolved itself” in March. Mr. Russell said she also had Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which can cause facial paralysis.

“They have a responsibility to give her brutally honest advice and then abide by her wishes, since they — not they — were elected,” said David Axelrod, a former top adviser to former President Barack Obama. “And they have a duty to help her fulfill her own responsibilities to her state and the office.”

Employees in Ms. Feinstein’s office say they have candid conversations with her about her future and don’t shield her from reality. So far she has insisted she can work and has no plans to leave office before her term ends in 2025; she is not seeking re-election.

Her aides do not make statements without Ms. Feinstein’s approval, describing her as strong-willed even in her diminished state.

“All senators rely heavily on personnel to do the job, especially a senator who represents 40 million people,” said her chief of staff, James Sauls. “While the staff advises her, she is ultimately the one who makes the decision on how best to take action for the people of California.”

Yet Ms. Feinstein’s staff has drawn criticism from critics on the left who are angry at her refusal to resign immediately, who claim her aides are complicit in supporting a legislator who should no longer be serving.

This month, a reporter for The Intercept, Ken Klippenstein, posted on Twitter names, salaries and other details of senior and junior staff members in Ms. to disgrace. who should be forever blacklisted from politics because they care so little about their country that they refuse to step down.

The posts were condemned by many left and right and eventually deleted.

For now, her aides must figure out how to keep Ms. Feinstein’s office running as best as possible in the absence of a fully functional senator. They did it, some said, by relying on the senator’s three decades of policy stance and the explicit systems she had put in place long ago that were designed to make her office efficient—and which earned her the reputation of being a of the more demanding workplaces on Capitol Hill.

Ms. Feinstein, who says she has never taken a real vacation, expects the same dedication to her work as she does.

Staff meetings have hierarchical seating assignments. All aides are expected to write a so-called “weekly,” a memo detailing their work for the week for the senator to review.

Information is delivered to Ms. Feinstein in color-coded folders. There is a format for submitting voting recommendations to the Senator. And the office has a vast library of letters from which it can draw answers to some five million pieces of voter correspondence it receives each year.

In recent months, the decades-old systems have helped the office run without her, as Ms. Feinstein’s blue-tabbed press kit has been delivered to her, filled with somber clips about her health, editorials calling for her resignation, and polls showing that most California voters want Ms. Feinstein to step down.`

Ms. Feinstein has recently lost some of the staff who know her and her systems best. David Grannis, her longtime chief of staff, left office earlier this year in a long-planned move. Its veteran communications director, Tom Mentzer, died in late February.

Yet many of her more senior policy officers have been with her for more than a decade and feel a great sense of loyalty to Ms. Feinstein, and equally committed to their areas of expertise. They continue their work and communicate with the Senator by phone, memos and faxes. (Yes, Feinstein’s office still faxes.)

Since returning to Washington, Ms. Feinstein has missed six votes and has not participated in committee hearings or caucus lunches. Nevertheless, its employees feel that the office must continue to function. And the reality of the Senate is that, even if a Senator is on the sidelines, an office can function in a pretty normal way.

Files deal with matters that would never have reached the level of a senator: requesting passport renewals, assisting people applying for U.S. citizenship, helping people enrolling in a military service academy, or seeking exemption from a federal administrative decision.

Employees in Washington and California also review credit applications under a long-running system, which now allows them to expedite the process that ultimately requires Ms. Feinstein’s approval for funding, even if she’s not there.

And Ms. Feinstein has always been formal, preferring to communicate with her Senate colleagues through letters or memos rather than in person.

Since returning, Ms. Feinstein has co-sponsored legislation to support the development of facilities that use wood from projects to reduce hazardous fuels from wildfires. She also co-sponsored legislation with Tennessee Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn that would allow independent music makers to deduct all their production costs in the year they are incurred, rather than later.

Yet her assistants have taken on an outsized role that Ms. Feinstein may have once found hard to swallow.

“You can’t let the staff lead you,” she told her biographer, Jerry Roberts, in the 1990s. “The person in charge must be the leading post.”