San Francisco Bay Area Representative Barbara Lee has filed paperwork to race for the long-serving Senator Dianne Feinstein’s seat.

LOS ANGELES — Bay Area Rep. Barbara Lee on Wednesday filed federal paperwork to race for the California seat long held by Senator Dianne Feinstein, potentially adding another Democrat and nationally recognized black woman to a growing area, in which already includes two other members of the House of Representatives.

Although Lee has not made an official announcement, many expect her to enter the competition. She filed paperwork to form a Senate fundraising committee a day after Feinstein, at 89, the oldest member of Congress, announced she would retire when her term expires next year.

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Lee is “filling out prep paperwork and her announcement will be made before the end of the month,” spokeswoman Cathy Merrill said.

Lee will join US Democratic Party Representatives Kathy Porter and Adam Schiff in the contest, who previously ran for the seat Feinstein has held for three decades.

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Lee, 76, is perhaps best known for being the only member of Congress to vote against allowing military force after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

She is the highest-ranking black woman appointed to House Democratic Leadership and is co-chair of the Policy and Steering Committee.

She has long been an outspoken advocate for abortion rights. In 2021, she was one of several members of Congress who gave personal testimony about their own abortions during a congressional hearing.

Lee became pregnant at age 16 in the mid-1960s. At the time, abortion was illegal in California, so a family friend helped send her to a “back street clinic in Mexico,” she said at the time.

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She didn’t have any side effects from the procedure, but she said many other women weren’t so lucky at the time.

“In the 1960s, unsafe septic abortion was the leading cause of death for African American women,” Lee said.