PARTY POLITICS

Last month Shelby and several staff members trekked to New York, where a number of securities firms sponsored a fundraiser for his 2004 reelection campaign.

Last month Shelby and several staff members trekked to New York, where a number of securities firms sponsored a fundraiser for his 2004 reelection campaign. Held in the tony Sky Club atop midtown Manhattan’s landmark MetLife Building, the event gave Wall Street lobbyists and executives an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the Alabama Republican, who rose to the committee chairmanship after Phil Gramm, previously the panel’s senior Republican, left the Senate for UBS Warburg. Shelby, a conservative Democrat until he switched parties following the 1994 GOP congressional sweep, was the ranking Republican on the high-profile Select Committee on Intelligence in the last Congress, where he earned a reputation as a maverick who wasn’t afraid to break ranks with President Bush and other senior Republicans on national security issues. Wall Street doesn’t know what to expect, policywise, from its new overseer, and the senator himself wouldn’t comment on the evening. But one person who attended the soiree said Shelby and his staff took a keen interest in the industry’s preparedness for future terrorist attacks. “He wanted to know exactly what happened on 9/11, how everyone responded and particularly how the New York Stock Exchange would handle it if something else happened.”

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