Richard Shelby
Richard Craig "Dick" Shelby is an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Alabama from 1987 to 2023. First elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 as a Democrat, Shelby switched to the Republican Party in 1994. Shelby is the longest-serving U.S. senator from Alabama, holding office for exactly 36 years.
Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Shelby is a 1957 graduate of the University of Alabama. He was admitted to the Alabama bar in 1961 and earned an LL.B. from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1963. Shelby served as a Tuscaloosa city prosecutor from 1963 to 1971. He also worked as a U.S. magistrate for the Northern District of Alabama and as a special assistant Attorney General of Alabama. Shelby served in the Alabama State Senate from 1970 to 1978, when he was elected from the 7th district to the United States House of Representatives. He served in the House until 1987; during his House tenure, he was among a group of conservative Democrats known as the boll weevils.
In 1986, Shelby was elected to the U.S. Senate in a tight race. In 1994, the day after the Republican Revolution in which the GOP gained the majority in Congress midway through President Bill Clinton's first term, Shelby switched parties and became a Republican. He was reelected by a large margin in 1998, facing no significant electoral opposition thereafter. Shelby chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2018 to 2021, and he also chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Senate Banking Committee, and the Senate Rules Committee.
In February 2021, Shelby announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022. Katie Britt, his former chief of staff, was elected to succeed him.
Early life and education
Shelby was born in Birmingham, Alabama on May 6, 1934. He is the son of Alice L. and Ozie Houston Shelby and is a fifth-generation Alabamian. Shelby received a bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama in 1957, was admitted to the Alabama State Bar in 1961, and received an LL.B. from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1963.Early career
Shelby was a city prosecutor in Tuscaloosa, Alabama from 1963 to 1971. He also worked as a U.S. Magistrate for the Northern District of Alabama and as a special assistant state attorney general.Shelby was elected to the Alabama Senate in 1970 and served until 1978, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was reelected to Congress three times, serving until 1987. Shelby was one of the more conservative Democrats in Congress, and a member of the boll weevils, a group of moderate to conservative-leaning Democrats who often worked with President Ronald Reagan on defense issues.
U.S. Senate
Elections
1986
In the 1986 U.S. Senate election in Alabama, Shelby won the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat held by Republican Jeremiah Denton, the first Republican elected to the Senate from Alabama since Reconstruction. He won a very close race as the Democrats regained control of the Senate.1992
Shelby was easily reelected even as Bill Clinton lost Alabama's electoral votes.1998
On November 9, 1994, one day after the Republican Revolution in which Republicans won control of both houses in the midterm elections, Shelby switched his party affiliation to Republican. Shelby's party switch gave the Republicans a 53–47 majority in the Senate. He won his first election as a Republican in 1998 by a large margin.2004
Shelby faced no significant opposition in 2004.A September 2009 poll showed Shelby had a 58% approval rating, with 35% disapproving.
2010
Shelby again faced no significant opposition and was reelected to a fifth term.In 2014, The Wall Street Journal criticized Shelby for hoarding campaign and PAC contributions and not sharing them with colleagues.
2016
Shelby was reelected to a sixth term in 2016.Tenure
1980s
In 1987, Shelby opposed Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, a move attributed to lobbying by Alabama African-American leaders who reminded Shelby that he had relied on support from black voters in narrowly defeating Denton in 1986. In 1991, Shelby supported President George H. W. Bush's conservative Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.1990s
In 1991, Shelby sponsored legislation granting federal recognition to the MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians. Though confident it would pass, Shelby stressed the "need to get more documentation regarding establishment of their tribal identity." The Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs voted 11 to 2 in favor of the legislation on July 18.Shelby publicly feuded with President Bill Clinton during the first half of Clinton's first term. At a meeting with Vice President Al Gore, he turned to the TV cameras and denounced the Clinton program as "high on taxes, low on cuts".
Shelby served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1995 to 2003, stepping down because of a Senate rule limiting committee terms to eight years. He took an adversarial stance toward the intelligence community during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. He helped sink Anthony Lake's nomination as CIA director in 1997 and promised to investigate the use of American-made satellites by the Chinese to gather intelligence. Shelby took a hard line on leaks of classified information. In 2000 he introduced a bill, vetoed by Clinton, "that would have broadened the law that criminalizes release of national defense information." According to The Washington Post:
Civil liberties groups and news organizations, which argued that the legislation would chill their ability to get information from officials, lobbied for the veto....In 2002, with George W. Bush in the White House, Shelby reintroduced his language, but then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said that "rigorous investigation" and enforcement of existing laws—not new legislation—were the best way to fight leaks.
In 1991, Shelby supported the Crime Bill S.1241 sponsored by Senator Joseph Biden that instituted a national waiting period for handgun purchases as well as a federal ban on semi-automatic firearms.
In January 1992, Shelby met with Chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, advocating that the basic cost of money be reduced from 3.5% to 3% to stimulate the economy. He confirmed afterward that he intended to vote for Greenspan for another term as Federal Reserve Chair and said that Greenspan was not opposed to his suggestion to cut the discount rate to its lowest in 20 years in addition to agreeing with him on the need for a restoration of investment tax credits and a special tax rate for capital gains along with the providing of incentives to encourage savings.
In 1992, Shelby's aide Tom Barnes was murdered in a hold-up robbery. In response, Shelby supported the reinstatement of the death penalty in D.C.
In 1999, Shelby opposed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, which repealed parts of the Glass–Steagall Legislation, and was the only Republican senator and one of eight senators overall to vote against it.
On February 12, 1999, Shelby was one of 50 senators to vote to convict and remove Bill Clinton from office.
2000s
Shelby was highly critical of CIA Director George Tenet in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. From 2003 until 2007, he chaired the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. As of 2022, he was a member of the Appropriations Committee and chaired its subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science and was formerly a member of the Special Committee on Aging. He lost his chairmanships in 2007 when Democrats regained control of the Senate.In 2004, a federal investigation concluded that Shelby revealed classified information to the media while a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Specifically, he revealed classified information on June 19, 2002, to Carl Cameron, the chief political correspondent on Fox News. The information consisted of two messages between Al-Qaeda operatives intercepted by the National Security Agency on September 10, 2001, but not translated until the day after the attacks—"the match is about to begin" and "tomorrow is zero hour." The Department of Justice declined to file criminal charges against Shelby and transferred the case to the Senate Ethics Committee. In 2005 the committee concluded its probe into the leak.
As chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, Shelby opposed legislation that would have permitted additional competition in the title insurance industry.
Shelby co-chaired the Congressional Privacy Caucus and Zero Capital Gains Tax Caucus. He was also the Senate co-chair of the National Security Caucus and a member of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Centrist Coalition.
In March 2009, as the Obama administration was expected to reverse limits on embryonic stem-cell research imposed by the Bush administration, Shelby said, "My basic tenet here is I don't think we should create life to enhance life and to do research and so forth. I know that people argue there are other ways. I think we should continue our biomedical research everywhere we can, but we should have some ethics about it." Later that month, he was one of 14 senators to vote against a procedural move that essentially guaranteed a major expansion of a national service corps. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill's cost for the fiscal year 2010 of $418 million and around $5.7 billion for 2010 through 2014.
In February 2010, Shelby placed a hold on more than 70 of Obama's nominees to various government posts, in a protest over an Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker contract and the FBI's Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center. He lifted all but three of the holds three days later, saying, "The purpose of placing numerous holds was to get the White House's attention on two issues that are critical to our national security—the Air Force's aerial refueling tanker acquisition and the FBI's Terrorist Device Analytical Center. With that accomplished, Sen. Shelby has decided to release his holds on all but a few nominees directly related to the Air Force tanker acquisition until the new Request for Proposal is issued." White House spokesman Robert Gibbs criticized Shelby for "hold up qualified nominees for positions that are needed because he didn't get two earmarks"; Shelby denied the holds were over earmarks.