Sen. Richard Shelby received a warm welcome in Mobile Monday morning as he looked back on a 50-year career in politics – and shared a few thoughts on the future, as well as one of two glimpses of might-have-beens.
Shelby, born in Birmingham, was elected to the state senate in 1970 and to the U.S. House in 1978. In 1986 he won the Senate seat then occupied by Jeremiah Denton. Previously a conservative Democrat, he shifted to the Republican party in 1994 and held the Senate seat until the present; in early 2021 he announced his intention to retire when his current term ends.
Shelby’s appearance in Mobile was an installment in the “Forum Alabama” speaker series presented by the Mobile Chamber. It also was described by some as part of a “farewell tour” for the state’s longtime senior senator.
The biggest feature of Shelby’s legacy has been his ability to bring federal funding to Alabama for major projects such as a planned FBI campus at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville. Shelby and other speakers at his Mobile appearance singled out his work generally on behalf of the port and particularly his effort to find a large portion of the funding for a near-$400 million project to deepen and widen the channel connecting the port to the Gulf of Mexico.
Shelby has been “not only the longest-serving but the most influential United States senator ever to serve the state of Alabama,” said Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson, who presented Shelby with a proclamation declaring Richard Shelby Day in the city.
“Long ago Sen. Shelby saw the Alabama state docks and the port of Mobile as an asset for the entire state, more so than any other leader in Montgomery or Washington, D.C.,” said Stimpson. “In the world of politics, Richard Shelby will go down in history as being tremendously successful as he unashamedly invested in Alabama’s future. His keen understanding of the rules of engagement, his mastery of procedures, and his building of bipartisan relationships for collaboration put him in a category of being the best of the best – Top Gun.”
John Driscoll, director and CEO of the Alabama State Port Authority, likewise said Shelby’s vision was as important as the funding he’d won for the state.
“Senator Shelby’s goal has never been just to send a check,” Driscoll said. “It’s always been to create the conditions for long-term growth and success in all of Alabama, not just in Lower Alabama, in all of Alabama. … All of these investments position Mobile and Alabama for the future, a very very bright future indeed.”
Shelby himself took advantage of his time to praise other leaders he’d worked with over the years, including congressmen Jack Edwards, Sonny Callahan, Jo Bonner, Bradley Byrne and Denton.
Though his remarks to the crowd were general and didn’t get into politics, Shelby did lift the curtain on some behind-the-scenes discussions. He said he once sounded out Byrne – who now heads the Mobile Chamber -- about becoming U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.
Shelby said he made the call when Byrne was serving in the Alabama Senate, which would put it between 2003 and 2007 – likely around the time David York resigned from the position in 2005.
“I called him, he was in the state senate, he was doing well, he had a family … I said, ‘Bradley, would you like to be the U.S. attorney, here in the Southern District?’ He said, ‘Well, I would like to have been, a number of years back, but now I have obligations to my family,’” said Shelby.
Shelby also described a fateful meeting with Elliot Maisel, the chair of the Mobile Airport Authority and a driving force in the plan to swap commercial passenger service from west Mobile to the Brookley aeroplex.
“I remember when Elliot Maisel came to me in Washington, and he said, ‘I’ve got this idea to move the Mobile airport downtown,’” said Shelby. “‘I said, ‘Boy, that would make a lot of convenience, wouldn’t it?’ among other things … I thought, ‘Wow, man, that [could] never happen.’ About four hours later after thinking about it I called him, I said, ‘It could happen.’ And it is happening.”
Though Shelby did not address the current political situation in Washington during his remarks, he did while taking questions from media beforehand.
Asked whether he would vote for former president Donald Trump, if Trump should run again, Shelby said he would vote for the Republican party’s nominee, whoever that was.
“I’ve worked with the president,” Shelby said, referring to Trump. “I’ve got a lot of respect for him in a lot of ways. He’s different. He’s a unique person. We’ll have to see what unfolds, but I’ll be a private citizen. We’ll go from there.”
Asked about congressional hearings on the Jan. 6 insurrection, Shelby said, “I was there. That was a dark day for the country and I thought it would never happen, when they stormed into the Senate, the House, the Capitol. People should be punished for that.”
As for upcoming midterm elections, Shelby said he expects his party to make gains.
“You never know what will happen,” he said. “I think the House will flip for Republicans. We’ve got a good chance to flip the Senate, but it has to be on the battleground. I say we’ll win both the House and the Senate.”
Asked what he thought would keep him busy after retirement, Shelby has a quick answer: “My wife.” (At another point in the program, Stimpson commented that “Those closest to our senior senator know that he would never have flown this high or been this successful were it not for the wise counsel and faithful support from the best and the smartest of all the Shelbys, his lovely wife of 62 years, Annette Shelby.”)
“I’ve been married 62 years and she’ll keep me busy doing something,” he said. “If you’re married you’ll understand that. I’ll stay busy doing something. As we move on in our lives, we do slow down.”
Asked if he had could go back and give himself some advice at the beginning of his career, Shelby said it would be “Work harder. You can’t work too hard. People think they can. Work harder, seize the moment when you can.
“I think overall I look back and say I worked for the state, I worked for the country,” he said. “You can’t change everything – you don’t want to change everything. It’s been a good run.”