Richard Shelby turns 90 in 2024

     

     Richard Shelby's 90th Birthday is 5-6-24.

     He is one of several U.S. Senators who are now past 80 years old. If he wants another term, the election is on November 8, 2022, when he'll be 88.

    The Washington Post asks if that is too old for the position. They talked with Shelby and other octogenarian members of the Upper House:

"Shelby, 86, seems less inclined to make another run. Once considered the Senate’s most voracious fundraiser, Shelby has collected just $261,000 for his campaign account since 2017.

On Friday, he said he would decide in late January. “I think everybody has to evaluate their own situation, what they want to do, how long they want to say, what they do when they’re here, what their opportunities are. And I’ll say, there’s a season in everything,” he said.

Shelby, the Appropriations Committee chairman, has had a front-row seat for senators whose final years were marked by a bad decline. Cochran had to resign midterm, and two of the previous chairs, Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), died while in office in 2010 and 2012, respectively."

     Shelby was elected as a Democrat, but suddenly decided he was a Republican one day after the GOP won control of both houses in the 1994 midterm elections.