Alabama GOP Sen. Richard Shelby will retire at the end of his term in 2022

Richard Shelby.
(Image credit: Toni L. Sandys-Pool/Getty Images)

Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) announced Monday that he'll retire at the end of 2022 rather than seek re-election for a seventh term.

Unlike his GOP colleague Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who cited increasing partisanship in Congress as a major factor in his decision to step down, it doesn't seem like this choice was particularly complicated — Shelby, who has been in Congress for over four decades, is 86 now and will be 88 in 2022. As he put it in a statement, "for everything, there is a season."

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.