Shelby on 2016 re-election: ‘I’m in!’

WASHINGTON — Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said today that he is officially “in” to run for re-election in 2016.

Shelby was first elected to the Senate in 1986 and prior to that served for 8 years in the U.S. House. With roughly four decades of experience under his belt and thanks to the newly elected Republican majority in the Senate, Shelby now chairs the Senate Banking Committee, one of the most powerful posts in the body.

The Banking Committee chairmanship places Shelby at the center of highly anticipated GOP efforts to roll back regulations imposed on the U.S. financial sector in Dodd-Frank. He will also be the central player in housing finance reform, an issue that does not garner headlines, but could have a significant impact on the U.S. economy. Close to 100 percent of the U.S. mortgage market is currently backed by the federal government. Shelby is believed to be leading the committee toward reforming and significantly reducing the government’s role in the marketplace.

With the Republican primary being the only game in town in Alabama, any potential electoral challenge to Shelby would likely come from the right and focus on hot-button topics, like Common Core and immigration, issues on which Shelby has taken a consistently conservative tack.

“I would be very wary of Common Core for the simple reason (that) sooner or later you’re going to have a federal mandate, probably enforced through the Department of Education all across the country,” Shelby told Yellowhammer in a recent interview. “You don’t know what it’ll lead to. It sounds good, you know, in an abstract way — we’ve got to have the basic courses for everybody in America. But in America, we’ve run our schools overall for 200 years locally and statewide. At the end of the day our children will compete with all of them. If they’re in New Hampshire or if they’re in California or in Alabama, they have to compete. But I believe the local people ought to decide.”

And while Shelby’s Alabama colleague Jeff Sessions has made immigration his key issue, Shelby has consistently backed him up.

“I would like to acknowledge the diligence and leadership of my colleague from Alabama, Senator Sessions, on this issue,” Shelby said on the Senate floor during debate on the so called “Gang of Eight” immigration bill. “I commend his relentless effort to bring to light the many problems and questions surrounding the legislation before us.” Shelby joined Sessions in opposing the measure, calling it “the mother of all amnesties,” and has continued to be an outspoken opponent of President Obama’s more recent immigration executive orders.

On top of the challenges a primary opponent would have getting to the right of Shelby on key issues, it’s his fundraising prowess that would make him a particularly difficult target.

He currently has $18 million cash on hand in his campaign account. For context, that is more money than was spent in last year’s hotly contested Mississippi GOP primary by all candidates and groups combined.

At 80 years old, he continues to visit every county in the state each year, racking up almost 2,000 total town halls during his time in the Senate.

We’ll have a more in-depth look at Shelby’s 2016 re-election bid soon, but for now, his early message to the voters is simply, “I’m in!.”

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— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) December 3, 2014