Alabama State Auditor Andrew Sorrell was in Opelika on Monday to address the East Alabama Republican Assembly. Sorrell served in the Alabama House of Representatives from 2018 to 2022, prior to his election last year as state Auditor.
“In my first four years in the Legislature, I was the most conservative one down there,” Sorrell said, citing the ranking of members by the American Conservative Union and Club for Growth. “And it wasn’t even close. On every conservative scorecard, I was either number one or tied for number one.”
“They said I was too conservative to get elected statewide,” Sorrell said. “I got the highest percentage of any candidate on the ballot in November.”
“I was born in California, but I got out of there as quick as I could,” Sorrell said. “I was only there six weeks. We were there because Dad was a preacher at a Church there. If there is one thing that California needs, it’s more preachers. Dad took a job teaching Greek at a college in Wisconsin. I lived there until I was six years old. Dad got laid off from that job.”
Sorrel’s father was laid off at the college and worked as a truck driver until finally; he was offered a job as pastor of a Church in Muscle Shoals, so the family moved to Alabama.
” There is nowhere I would rather be,” Sorrell said.
Sorrell and his wife have one daughter and are expecting another.
“We are going to home-school our children,” Sorrell said.
“I got a good education at Muscle Shoals,” Sorrell said. “I can’t believe what has happened to the schools. There is a transgender kid in Muscle Shoals. When I was growing up, all my teachers were Christians.”
Sorrell said that he became an entrepreneur growing up. His brother, Matthew, went to college at the University of North Alabama and received a $200 scholarship, so he thought his books were paid for. “That only bought one book,” Sorrell said. Then when that course was over, the bookstore would only pay $50. His brother decided to buy books on Amazon for substantial cost savings. He wanted to buy books and then sell them for a profit but had no money, so he formed a 50:50 partnership with Andrew because Andrew could front the $2000 in startup capital.
“He came back home with a basket full of textbooks and $2500,” Sorrell said. They began offering cash for textbooks at the end of the semester to resell them at the beginning.
“We were the book guys on campus. At one point, we bought 856 books in four days.”
“We started buying hundreds of textbooks a day,” Sorrell said. Before selling the company, Andrew and his brother had grown the company to forty employees and over a million dollars in revenue.
Next, Sorrell decided to go into the pawn shop business to sell guns.
“It took two and a half years,” to open the store, Sorrell said. “Then I opened a second one – Gold, Guns, & Guitars. I also have eight rentals around the state.”
“I am not in politics to make money – in fact, I am losing money,” Sorrell said. “Most of them (legislators) are losing money. Dr. [Larry] Stutts – I guarantee you that he is losing money in the legislature instead of delivering babies.”
The Sorrell brothers became involved in local GOP campaigns, but all the candidates they helped lost their races.
“Andrew, we are doing something wrong,” Matthew Sorrell said that his brother told him. “There are schools that teach you how to learn to run campaigns.”
So they spent a week at a D.C. event learning how to run campaigns, and things changed.
“We learned how to be campaign managers,” Sorrell said. After that, they found growing success.
Sorrell said that Republican dominance has brought its own unique problem.
“A big problem we have in the state is if you can’t run as a Democrat, you run in the Republican primary,” Sorrell said. “That is why we need party registration. I know you have a large problem with that down here with that.”
Sorrell ran for House District 3 when he could not recruit a candidate to challenge incumbent Rep. Marcel Black (D-Tuscumbia). Black ultimately decided not to run again.
“I narrowly won,” Sorrell said. “The gentleman that replaced me got 64% where I just got 52%. Part of that is redistricting made it a lot more fair, but it is also a lot more acceptable to vote Republican in Colbert County than it was.”
Sorrell said one of his greatest legislative accomplishments was seeing constitutional carry law passed. That removed the requirement that gun owners purchase a pistol permit from their sheriff to carry their handguns concealed.
“The guy that had it before I got elected got elected as a circuit judge, so I agreed to carry it,” Sorrell said.
“I only had seven cosponsors,” Sorrell said that first year.
That second year State Rep. Connie Rowe, a member of the leadership, “Stuck her neck on it” and agreed to cosponsor the bill after 22 members had signed on to cosponsor. “That took it to 26 or 27.”
That third year, “I got it up to 28 or 29 (cosponsors),” Sorrell said.
The bill would not come to the floor, so Sorrell decided to add it as an amendment to the lifetime permit bill to force a House floor vote on the legislation. Sorrell said that the Speaker of the House asked him to not bring that amendment and agreed to cosponsor the bill and bring it to the floor in 2022 if he would agree.
“I decided to take the deal,” Sorrell said. “Fortunately for me, the Speaker kept his word.”
Sorrell said that the decision by Mobile Sheriff Sam Cochran to fire State Rep. Shane Stringer as a deputy in the 2021 session over his support for constitutional carry was a key moment in passing the bill because legislators who weren’t fans of constitutional carry liked Stringer.
“I wanted to introduce an amendment to name it the Sam Cochran bill,” Sorrell said. “But they wouldn’t let us add amendments on the floor.”
“We owe a debt to Shane Stringer because he lost a very well-paying job with the Mobile Sheriff’s office for his support of constitutional carry,” Sorrell said. “It is not perfect. There are some things in that bill that I still do not like.”
The version of the bill that passed was sponsored by Stringer, but Stringer agreed to keep Sorrell as part of the process through.
“I was part of getting constitutional carry in the state of Alabama,” Sorrell said.
Sorrell said that he ran for Auditor because some legisaltors were trying to get rid of the office. The Auditor maintains inventories of state property.
“How much more stuff would be lost, if we did not have an auditor,” Sorrell said.
The Auditor is also on the board of adjustments for the state of Alabama, where they decide whether or not the state has to settle a claim from a person who claims that the state wronged them.
One case they heard recently was from an orchard owner who claimed that the Alabama Department of Transportation sprayed herbicide that blew onto his property, killing his trees.
“ALDOT said that they do not spray if there are winds of over 10 miles per hour,” Sorrell said. “One of the other members looked it up on his phone and there were 24 mile per hour winds that day. I am pretty sure that the dude is going to get his fruit trees replaced.”
“I thought this was going to be boring, but I thoroughly enjoy serving on the board of adjustments,” Sorrell said.
Sorrell said that he opposes a bill to strip the Governor, the Auditor, and the Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries from their power to appoint members of the Boards of Registrars instead of having them appointed by local officials.
“Who is running those counties?” Sorrell said.
Sorrell warned that there could be a situation where county officials who are not concerned with fair and honest elections will be picking the registrars to run the elections to stay in power.
“The County Commission association has made this one of their top ten agenda items,” Sorrell warned. “Tell your local legislators to oppose that one.”
Currently Jefferson County is the only county where local officials pick the registrars.
“I want Jefferson County back,” Sorrell said.
Sorrell said that while the Auditor can find where items had been lost or even stolen, “The auditor can do very little about it. The auditor cannot prosecute anyone. I have to ask for the attorney general to prosecute someone. The problem is that Steve Marshall is fighting the Biden administration over COVID mandates and does not have time to prosecute someone who stole a $500 laptop.”
“Just prosecute some of them,” Sorrell said.
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