Maverick Democrat Shelby Unyielding

When the Senate was voting last week on whether to halt the filibuster that has been delaying passage of President Clinton’s economic stimulus package, Alabama Democrat Richard C. Shelby did more when his name was called than simply vote “no.”

Aware that everyone in the chamber was watching, the portly senator rose to his full 6-foot-4 height and gestured a sweeping thumbs down.

It was the latest skirmish in an ongoing war between the White House and its least favorite Democrat. In the most unsubtle fashion possible, the Administration is trying to make Shelby an example of what happens to the party unfaithful.

The fight started when Shelby ignored a White House plea for restraint and openly criticized the President’s economic package as soon as it was unveiled in February. “The taxman cometh,” he said, assuring that he would be quoted around the country.

Given a chance to make amends during a hastily arranged meeting with Vice President Al Gore the following day, Shelby persisted. Standing beside a clearly embarrassed Gore, the senator said before a bank of television cameras that the economic plan was “high on taxes, low on cuts.”

That did it. Without wasting any time, the Administration moved 900 National Aeronautics and Space Administration jobs out of Alabama to Texas. Then, lest anyone miss the point, it denied the senator tickets to a South Lawn ceremony honoring the University of Alabama’s championship football team.

Shelby is unbowed and notes that opinion polls and editorials in his state are running in his favor. Apparently thinking he has nothing to lose, he has even stepped up his attacks on the economic plan, saying that the stimulus package is “an unnecessary and unwise expenditure of precious federal dollars and I will not support this type of waste.”

Such independence is completely in character for the conservative 58-year-old Tuscaloosa County lawyer and former House member, who often has sided with Republicans in past budget battles. Some have even speculated that he eventually will change parties.

Meanwhile, White House officials said that their highly public campaign against Shelby is an important object lesson, establishing early in the Administration that Clinton will not tolerate disloyalty from the troops.

However, even some of Clinton’s allies on Capitol Hill worry that the President may have overreacted, making Shelby a political martyr and a hero in his state.

“If there were cooler and wiser heads down there (at the White House),” said one senator with close ties to Clinton, “Shelby would have gotten the message in a way that no one but him would have known anything about. . . .”