(Video Above: Sen. Richard Shelby enters The Exchange)
Six months after an Alabama state senator from Tuscaloosa named Richard Shelby got elected to Congress, U.S. President Jimmy Carter delivered his infamous “malaise speech.” Over the next three-and-a-half decades, Shelby perhaps more than any other Alabamian would have a front row seat for history — from the winning of the Cold War and the tragedy of 9/11, to the Reagan boom and the Obama bust.
Nowadays, walking around Tuscaloosa with Richard Shelby is similar to what it must be like to walk around The Vatican with the Pope.
His local office is tucked in the corner of a Greek Revival-style, 127,376-square-foot federal building on University Blvd. that the Tuscaloosa News called “the crown jewel of the city of Tuscaloosa’s Downtown Urban Renewal Project.” Not more than a mile away sits the 200,000 square foot Shelby Hall Research Center at the University of Alabama. Neither building would exist without Shelby’s ability to acquire the funding to make it happen. As a matter of fact, buildings on four university campuses around Alabama bear his name for that reason.
So when we walked into Hooligans, a Mediterranean restaurant that is a favorite among locals, Shelby was met with a combination of reverence and curiosity.
But the long-time senator’s lack of pretentiousness disarms the room almost immediately. He waits his turn to order at the back of a line that snakes almost out the door. He spends most of his time before ordering talking up how good the lamb is and debating the proper pronunciation of “gyro.” He initiates conversations with anyone close enough to listen. He’s a politician, there’s no doubt about that. Shelby has lived most of his adult life in perpetual campaign mode. But he comes across more like someone who’s just entirely comfortable in his own skin at this point.
Shelby turned 80-years-old earlier this year, a fact that surprises most people who’ve spent any amount of time around him. He still travels to every county in Alabama every single year, hosting town halls and visiting local businesses, a practice that he believes has played a major role in making him one of the longest-tenured elected officials in the country.
It’s that experience that gives Shelby a unique perspective on wide variety of issues, from national security (he served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1995 to 2003), to financial policy (he chaired the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs from 2003 until 2007). If Republicans retake the senate this year, he will likely reassume his post at the top of the Banking Committee.
In this week’s episode of The Exchange, Sen. Shelby talks about what it’ll mean for Alabama if Republicans win the majority in the Senate. He also shares what he thinks about some of the country’s most prominent elected officials (Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Jeff Sessions, etc), why he’s concerned about another housing crisis, and more.
Check out the video of our interview above. Interested in more episodes of The Exchange? Click over to Yellowhammer TV.
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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