We will find out "very shortly" whether Dianne Feinstein will run for a fifth full term in the U.S. Senate in 2018. That's what she told Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
"I'm ready for a good fight," Feinstein said. "I've got things to fight for, I'm in a position where I can be effective, and hopefully that means something to California."
Feinstein has been publicly noncommittal about a 2018 run, and when she was asked in a recent television interview whether she was "up for another six years," she replied: "Well, we will see, won't we."
At age 84, Feinstein is the oldest current senator, and a recent poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found just 45 percent of voters polled would be inclined to vote for her if she ran again in 2018. That's down a bit from a poll taken in March, which also found that 62 percent of voters thought it would be a bad thing for her to run when told of her age.
Feinstein dismissed these polls when asked about them by NBC's Todd saying, "There are polls, and then there are polls."