Richard Shelby

Richard Craig "Dick" Shelby (born May 6, 1934) is the senior United States Senator from Alabama. He was a Democrat until 1994, although one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, but switched parties after the Republican take over of Congress in that year. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Shelby was a lawyer before entering politics. He practiced law in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, serving as city prosecutor from 1963 to 1971. He then entered politics, rising slowly but winning every election he tried. He was a member of the Alabama state senate from 1970 to 1978, a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1987 and a member of the United States Senate since 1986, when he defeated Republican incumbent Jeremiah Denton. He was reelected to the Senate in 1992 and for the first time as a Republican in 1998. In the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, Richard Shelby is known for the Shelby Amendment, a law he sponsored that eased some of the restrictions placed on Dallas' secondary airport by the contentious Wright Amendment. (See the Love Field article for a history of these amendments.) Controversy surrounds Shelby's role in leaking national security secrets about the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in his role as Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. {| border="1" align="center"\n| width="30%" align="center"| Preceded by:
Jeremiah Denton\n| width="40%" align="center"|U.S. Senator from Alabama
1987-\n| width="30%" align="center"| Succeeded by:
Incumbent\n|-\n| align="center" colspan="3"|Serves alongside: Jeff Sessions\n|} Shelby, Richard

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\n* Leaking national Secrets