Larry Stutts

Larry Collins Stutts (born May 1954)^[1] is a physician from Tuscumbia, Alabama, who is a Republican member of the Alabama State Senate for District 6 which encompasses Colbert, Franklin, and parts of Marion, Lawrence, and Lauderdale counties in the northwestern portion of the state. First elected on November 4, 2014, he upset the incumbent Democrat Roger Bedford, Jr., by sixty-seven votes.

Born in Sheffield, Alabama, Stutts is the son of an accountant-father and a nurse-mother. He graduated in 1979 from the veterinary school at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabama, and moved to Columbus, Georgia, to practice veterinary medicine. However, he soon returned to his hometown of Cherokee, seventeen miles west of Tuscumbia. He thereafter graduated from the College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. An obstetrician and gynecologist since 1992, Dr. Stutts has delivered more than ten thousand babies.^[2] He has also taught at Northwest-Shoals Community College in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He is a member of Kiwanis International in Tuscumbia. Stutts attends the First Presbyterian Church of Tuscumbia. He and his wife, Jackie, have four children.^[1]

Stutts ran for the state Senate on a platform to repeal state regulations enforcing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, a measure pushed by then U.S. President Barack H. Obama and still in force. Following a recount, Stutts won, 17,641 votes (50.06 percent) to Roger Bedford's 17,574 (49.87 percent).^[3]

Stutts sits on these  Senate committees: (1) Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, (2) Fiscal Responsibility and Economic Development, (3) Health and Human Services, and (4) Judiciary.^[1]

In 2015, Senator Stutts voted to establish public charter schools and a board of trustees for the state community college system. He voted to require couples who marry to sign a marriage contract, rather than to obtain a marriage license. He co-sponsored the bill which forbids the expansion of Medicaid in his state. He voted to increase the cigarette tax, which passed the Senate 21-13. In 2016, he voted to prohibit the removal of monuments from public property, a measure that passed the Senate, 22-9. He voted to prohibit the establishment of abortuaries near  schools. He co-sponsored the measure forbidding dilation abortions in Alabama. He voted to permit concealed handguns to be carried in vehicles without a permit. He voted to increase funding for new prisons in the state. He did not vote on the question of establishing a state lottery, but the legislation passed the Senate 21-12. In 2017, he voted to permit the large Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish its own police force. He voted to allow employers in Alabama to inquire about past criminal histories of job applicants. He did not vote on the use of nitrogen in carrying out death penalty executions.^[4]

Dr. Stutts was an early supporter of conservative Republican former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore for the United States Senate seat vacated by now Attorney General Jeff Sessions.^[5] Moore now faces a liberal Democrat, former United States Attorney Doug Jones, in the December 12 special election. 

References[edit]