Talk:Richard Shelby

Consensus to change Richard Shelby portrait

• Unknown date
  Unknown date
• 2011
  2011
• 2022
  2022

Requesting consensus on the lead image for Richard Shelby. Based on Curbon7's reasoning, the 2011 and 2022 images suffer from being too zoomed-out (something I don't disagree with) which in my view doesn't facilitate clean half-crops. Instead, close crops of the head and neck area must be used if a clean cropped portrait is desired. However, the current lead image is not high quality, being only 478 × 598 pixels in size.

For me, I think going back to the uncropped 2011 image, where Shelby still looks surprisingly spry, fit and unwithered at 76, is alright. The zoomed-out aspect isn't exceptionally problematic in my opinion - I can still tell what Shelby looks like from a brief look. SuperWIKI (talk) 06:43, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this for a few days now. I do quite like the uncropped 2011 portrait. For a full-body political portrait, the shot composition and background noise is quite good. While I think for shoulder-length portraits tend to be more encyclopedic (ex. Richard Nixon), the color in the 2006 one is quite muted, and it is of lower resolution. Curbon7 (talk) 07:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. I only updated the 2022 one briefly because it happened to exist. The 2011 one has been there for years, anyway. SuperWIKI (talk) 07:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Nothing mentioned about his earmarking or pork barrel prowess!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/26/us/politics/richard-shelby-alabama-spending.html – Shelby, One of the Senate’s Last Big Spenders, ‘Got Everything’ for Alabama: His farewell earmarking profile.

https://rollcall.com/2022/03/16/in-the-game-of-earmarks-shelby-has-no-peers/

https://rollcall.com/2022/12/22/once-again-shelby-stands-alone-when-it-comes-to-earmarks/

https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-congress/2009/03/byrd-shelby-bond-are-senate-earmark-kings-016484

https://www.politico.com/story/2011/09/rocket-man-shelby-pushes-for-nasa-062767

https://www.politico.com/story/2010/07/shelby-steers-cash-to-ex-aides-040388

A multitude of sources describe his various earmarking pursuits and his status at the earmarking and pork barrel spending "king". 2405:201:9004:E1CD:6819:A3F3:57B8:F40 (talk) 21:41, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

https://www.al.com/educationlab/2023/02/richard-shelby-earmarks-100-million-for-university-of-alabama-faculty-unprecedented.html

This was his last successful earmark.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/politics/trump-spending-republicans-agriculture-research.html

Even this recent article mentions his record earmarking.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/19/richard-shelby-appropriations-gop-spending-bill-00074398

An article on his "swan song".

His last earmark was cut by his own party after he retired. For years, Mr. Shelby used his perch on the Appropriations Committee to single-handedly transform the landscape of his home state, harnessing billions of federal dollars to conjure the creation and expansion of university buildings and research programs, airports and seaports, and military and space facilities.

One of his most prioritized projects was the twin F.B.I. campuses at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, where over the course of a decade, he steered more than $3 billion to build up the 1,100 acres of land the bureau has secured there for facilities dedicated to cyberthreat intelligence and training. says this article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/08/us/politics/fbi-budget-earmark.html

2405:201:9004:E1CD:6819:A3F3:57B8:F40 (talk) 21:48, 14 May 2025 (UTC)